


A Cigarette's Lifespan

by guuzenkamo



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, Fear of Death, First Kiss, Guilt, Insecurity, Interrogation, M/M, Philosophy, Rants, Swearing, Unhealthy Amount of Fluff, cellmates, fear of aging, fear of being alone, mentions of a suicide, prolonged talks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 05:14:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4906831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guuzenkamo/pseuds/guuzenkamo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Izaya's plans go a little awry when he attempts to frame Shizuo for murder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KanraNee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KanraNee/gifts).



I

 

Shizuo climbed off of him, his hands jerking towards the pack of cigarettes resting on the nightstand. On average, it took him from four to five minutes to finish one cigarette. Sometimes when he was less riled up, he could smoke one for around seven minutes. Never longer than eight, though.

Izaya knew this because he had watched the same thing happen for six months now.

He stretched in his bed, heavy-lidded gaze falling on the clock. 3:01 AM. Shizuo had come over a little less than an hour ago, waking him up. They didn’t talk much after they had sex, Shizuo hardly looked at him. On the opposite, all Izaya could look at was the edge of Shizuo’s cheekbones and the sharp lines of his jaw. Shizuo had a beautiful profile.

“You know you’ll never pay off your debt.”

Shizuo slowly pulled his shirt on and buckled his pants. “What do you mean?”

“It’s mathematically impossible,” Izaya said, mentally skimming through the computations even if he knew it for a fact. “Assume you will never damage the city ever again, which isn’t true, but for the sake of keeping it simple, let’s assume that. Take the amount you owe them at the moment, add interest and inflation. Then take your lack of experience in any particular field, the lack of a higher degree education or other credentials. You’ll never earn enough money to pay off your debt.”

“You talk too much,” Shizuo said, but his tone never carried much anger after sex. He was alike an exhausted lion who gave it all, the lax movements of his body almost vulnerable. “I don’t care that I can’t pay it all. I deserve to give them all of my money anyway.”

Izaya wondered if he should tell him the truth. He was the one to tip off the city government on Shizuo’s continuous rampages around the town, diligently faxing them the necessary photographs and backed-up evidence. They had to finally admit it to themselves that Heiwajima Shizuo was a real force that could bend railings, tear vending machines off the ground and even destroy buildings. He wasn’t just a myth of Ikebukuro that people loved to gossip about. It probably didn’t matter that Izaya was the one to have them go after him, because Shizuo was repentant and determined to work hard to pay it off. He had found a second job, was now looking for a third. That was why he visited Izaya so late at night, his hands blackened with dirt and Izaya always made him take a shower first.

That strange sense of responsibility was foreign to Izaya. He rolled over to his side and used the ruins of his t-shirt to wipe the cum off his cock and stomach, the sticky substance a faint reminder that the sex did happen. Shizuo was so emotionless in the moments after, sometimes it was hard to believe that just minutes ago he used those strong hands to bring Izaya over the edge as he was coming himself.

Izaya’s cock twitched a little at the memories, but he came so hard just minutes ago, the promise of arousal was a little painful.

3:04 AM. The cigarette was half-done. Shizuo was fully dressed now, reaching for his boots.

“You know—”

“Keep the talking to a minimum.”

“Why?”

Shizuo muttered through his cigarette. “We do this for the sex. It’s to blow off steam. I don’t want to hear your voice.”

“Do you pretend I’m someone else?” Izaya asked with a wide smile.

“No,” Shizuo spat the truth like he was disgusted with it. “Do you?”

 _No_ , Izaya thought, but said nothing. He almost expected Shizuo to say yes, but then the monster’s imagination was probably quite poor.

Shizuo could have left immediately after, but he didn’t. He always stayed for the duration of that one cigarette, and even in that irritated moment of hearing Izaya talk, he didn’t hurry to finish it quicker or to throw it away half-done. He kept on smoking, as if he had to finish it with whatever pace was set from the beginning.

3:05 AM. Izaya knew there were only a few moments left. He partially hid underneath the blanket, feeling an itch crawl over his skin, settling somewhere underneath, on a deeper layer below the surface. Unreachable. He would never get to scratch it, because he would never search for it. He was a little scared of what he would find.

3:06 AM. Shizuo turned his head slightly to look behind himself. The dim light shed a glow of orange gold over his blond locks. His eyes widened a little at the view that was available from the windows of Izaya’s bedroom. That look of awe was the only emotion Shizuo let slip through his fingers during this cigarette break. Other than the familiar colors of anger and disgust, of course.

“You like the view.”

Shizuo hummed in response, shoving his bow-tie into the pocket. His eyes trailed over Izaya’s naked form, a slight twitch at the corners as if he was disgusted by what he saw, and Izaya felt like shoving a knife into Shizuo’s side. He knew he was wanted. Shizuo wouldn’t come to fuck him almost every night if that wasn’t the case.

3:07 AM. Shizuo got up and left, the burning end of the cigarette touching the filter. Izaya wondered if Shizuo realized how impeccable his timing was.

When he heard the distant slam of the front door downstairs, he turned off the lights and stared at the ceiling. There was a large crack twisting through the white of it, like a rogue vein in an otherwise smooth skin. He could have it fixed, but cracks were interesting. They gave him something to stare at.

 

!

 

Izaya loved running. He ran fast and light, rooftops blinking underneath his feet. His expensive shoes were finally put to good use again — he had stopped coming to Ikebukuro as often recently, his desire to see Shizuo sated almost on the nightly. But recently there was that itch that he couldn’t scratch, so he felt restless that day. He came out to play, and Shizuo kindly agreed to do their usual dance of the cat and mouse chasing.

Shizuo hated running. His face burned red with anger, breathing irregular, and he was god awful at parkour. He never did quite get the hang of it. Izaya’s body almost shuddered when he watched Shizuo take a roll because what he lacked in technique was made up for by the strong padding of muscle that coated his entire body. Shizuo never _had_ to learn the proper moves of parkour.

He leaped on top of a building, sending back a condescending look. “You know your front-rolls are terrible? If you were human, your spine would long have suffered irreversible damage.”

“ _Shut up_! Get your ass out of Ikebukuro!” Shizuo bellowed as he grabbed onto the edge of the rooftop to pull himself up.

“Ikebukuro this, Ikebukuro that…” Izaya sighed as he ran forward.

He was bored. Bored with their fights because Shizuo never really caught him unless Izaya wanted him to. Sometimes they had sex on some abandoned rooftop where Izaya was sure no eyes could see them. That was fun, but it was messy and he preferred the comfort of his bedroom. Sex with Shizuo was never boring, so it didn’t need the spice-up of being outside or anywhere else.

At the corner, he turned abruptly and leaned his back against the wall, a mischievous smile on his lips. Shizuo could never turn as fast as he did, being heavier and not as agile. The laws of physics were quite handy sometimes. He watched Shizuo’s heel dig into the concrete in a desperate attempt to halt his movement, but the turn was far too abrupt and he was sent over the edge into the flowing river below them.

The splash of water reached so high, it hit Izaya’s cheeks and a drop even touched his eyelashes. He blinked it off.

“Good idea, Shizu-chan,” he sang as he sat leisurely on the rails, squinting a little. The sunlight shimmered in the waves and flared off Shizuo’s sunglasses. “Going for a swim on a hot day like this. How’s the water? Should I join you?”

Shizuo growled something in response, but his mouth was still submerged underwater, and bubbles surrounded his incandescent face. What was prettier — the look of anger or the look of lust? Izaya weighed both, but couldn’t decide on either. When Shizuo climbed back up, his rage had mostly dissipated and he stared at the tragedy of his ruined cigarette pack. He stared at it for so long, Izaya felt a little scared if something didn’t break within the man. Like when a program was supposed to execute but the required files were missing.

A man passed by, and Izaya danced around him, bumming a cigarette. “Here,” he handed it to Shizuo, and Shizuo snatched it out of his fingers without a word of gratitude. Of course, he blamed Izaya for his own destroyed pack.

Shizuo finished smoking and turned to leave, shivering a little from the cold breeze that assaulted his drenched state. It was then that Izaya finally located the itch that had been nagging at him for days, maybe weeks or even months.

One cigarette’s lifetime was too short.

He wasn’t looking to identify it because he was scared to come to terms with it, but the change of scenery and a different scenario made it all too clear for him. His sharp mind was too agile to ignore it from then on.

 

!

 

“Shizu-chan is human.”

The old lady that lived in one of the buildings on the border between Ikebukuro and Shinjuku wobbled her frail head, listening to him. She was tiny, and Izaya still hadn’t asked her name. She told him she was going to kill herself soon. Izaya hadn’t asked why, because he had no interest in old people.

“What'd you think he was before?”

“Something not human,” Izaya waved his hand, knowing that he made little sense to someone outside of his head. That wasn’t the point. “I was in denial. So many things pointed to him being human, yet I conveniently tunnel visioned on his body that’s borderline supernatural.”

“Does it change anything? Him being a human or not?”

“Of course, it does,” Izaya said. “It changes too much.”

The old lady looked at him skeptically. “I thought this was about the cigarettes.” She was smoking one, too, and the mere sight of a burning end irritated him. Soon it would devour the white stick, reach the orange of the filter, and _poof_! Shizuo would be gone. Except there was no Shizuo in the picture right there and then, and Izaya blinked, gripping onto the ropes of the swings he was sitting on. He was spacing out harder than usual.

“It’s not about the cigarettes,” he smiled with reproach, turning to scan her withering frame again. “Come on, be a little more useful.”

“Of course, it’s not about the cigarettes,” she said with a scoff, not in the least bit offended by Izaya’s claim of her being useless as a dialogue partner. “I just didn’t know if you'd realized that yet. The first time you mentioned them was a few weeks ago. You were going on and on about it like a broken record. _Cigarettes don’t last long enough! I’m gonna invest in a company that makes longer cigarette sticks!_ ”

“Please stop,” he laughed. “Your rendition of my voice is embarrassing for you.”

“Then you shifted gears, started saying things like, _I could make him quit! I totally could_ , but a week later you came back saying it was impossible to make him quit.”

Izaya shook his head. Old people loved making fun of you. Come to think of it, he did consider making Shizuo quit. His subconscious latched onto the issue of the cigarettes a long while ago, but there was a deeper meaning there somewhere. The cigarettes were a symptom, not the cause of the problem.

“You should have told me,” he said automatically. “Would have saved me time.”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Very true,” he agreed. “When are you leaving?”

“August 27th.”

About two weeks from now, he realized. He looked around the playground, wondering if he would ever set foot here again after she passed away.

“Still not going to even try to talk me out of it?” she asked, using a wooden stick to draw figures in the sand underneath her feet. She was sitting on a bench to the right of the swings. The bulging veins trailing down her pale wrinkled legs were so disgustingly blue, Izaya made sure not to look at them again by accident.

Old people were boring. Their opinions had long formed and hardened, and there was little room to wiggle new ideas in. Originally, he lingered by her bench because he was disgusted by the old appearance and simultaneously thrilled by the chilling fear that filled him when he imagined himself growing that old. His mind was already falling prey to the spell of aging. He had been studying Hebrew these days, and his twenty-six year old mind didn’t absorb concepts as easily as when he was fourteen and breezing through five books on Russian grammar, all at the same time. The creeping sense of aging irritated him to no end. He wanted to hide it, pack it away and send it off to another country, but certain parts of his personality would never change. He would always be acutely aware of it.

“I wouldn’t talk _anyone_ out of it,” Izaya answered truthfully. “Especially not someone as old as you. Your potential is exhausted by now.”

Cold words uttered in the most polite form of Japanese, but he believed in them. He had told her quite a few hard truths by now, but she was never really affected by it.

“I agree,” she said amiably. “I had a good life.”

Her children never called her, her husband left her for a younger woman some twenty years ago. Self-delusion was a powerful thing, but Izaya didn’t care about her enough to want to rub it in her face.

“You and I must have a different definition of good,” was all he said as he brushed his thumb over the shiny screen of his phone. The sun was setting, and Shizuo usually dropped a message before he made the trip to Shinjuku.

“We most certainly do, young man. You don’t have a definition of good in the first place.”

An astute observation from someone as old as her. Perhaps experience and the weight of accumulated intelligence could make up for the lack of agility in an older mind. Izaya could only hope. He would never be brave enough to kill himself. Or would he? What was stronger, his fear of aging or his fear of death?

He looked down at his hands, the sight of his smooth skin reassuring him.

“Say,” he turned to her before he jumped off the swings. “Could I use your death for something?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll be a little too dead to care about what happens after I die.”

“With your blessing then,” he bowed playfully and turned to leave. “I’ll visit again before the 27th, you know.”

“You’re running away from something,” she yelled into his back, the volume of her voice setting off a flock of doves that were murmuring around her feet. They fluttered their wings and rose into the orange sky.

“I’m not running away,” Izaya smiled into the sunset, raising his hand in farewell. “I’m advancing in a different direction.”

 

!

 

On the day she died, Izaya dragged Shizuo all the way out to the border of Shinjuku.

Normally, Shizuo gave up on chasing him the moment Izaya was gone from the major areas of Ikebukuro, but on that day Izaya taunted him to the best of his ability. He mocked his intelligence, stamina and the lack of finesse in everything the monster did in life. When Shizuo still wanted to let go and go do his own things, Izaya had to resort to _lying_ when he insulted the monster, saying that out of all of his current partners Shizuo was the worst at sex. Izaya never had anyone else, but for some reason Shizuo was especially resistant to being sufficiently riled up on that day.

That seemed to do it. It had been a long time since Izaya had seen Shizuo so blown away by his anger. He stopped being coherent in his pathetic attempts of verbal comeback, only growling and roaring at this point.

The building where the old woman lived was easy to destroy. He still calculated the most optimal way to make it fall apart because he liked things to be efficient. It was one of the older buildings in the area, and the city planned to bulldoze it to the ground in the next month. That was the reason why everyone but the old woman had moved out, leaving it empty on the day she died.

He slipped in through one of the broken windows, and a large metal pipe came flying after him. Patient, he waited by the next door, waiting for Shizuo to make his way over. A vending machine followed. Izaya scanned the broken metal and glass, satisfied. A little piece broke off of it when it crashed into the room, lodging itself in his arm, but it wasn’t anything too bad.

“ _IZAYA_!”

“I can’t hear you from here, Shizu-chan!” Izaya sang back playfully. “You still haven’t answered my question though — how does it feel to be the worst at everything you do?”

Shizuo finally stormed in, completely destroying what was left of the window, and Izaya started running again.

Room after room, Shizuo followed after him like a disruptive tornado, a terrifying force of nature, and the levels of his rage began to be worrying. Izaya wasn’t really sure if Shizuo was going to let him go this time around. Would he chase him indefinitely? For now it was working out splendidly, and eventually, the building skewed a little threateningly, ceilings shifted and walls cracked. Izaya slipped out, deeming the job well done. He had gone through each room but the old woman’s, compromising the supports and making sure there was no homeless people holing up in some corner.

He analyzed his work from the rooftop of a neighboring building and estimated it would take another ten minutes for the building to begin crumbling down.

Shizuo ran out and beelined towards him again. _Why so angry_ , Izaya lazily thought as he smiled in the face of Shizuo’s fire. They were out of Ikebukuro by now, so it was probably the comment about sex.

“Relax, Shizu-chan,” Izaya drawled, figuring he needed to defuse the bomb before it exploded. “I don’t sleep with anyone but you.”

Shizuo staggered, came to a stop. He had almost climbed up to the rooftop by then. Izaya was only a level above, looking down on him with a satisfied grin.

“Which one is a lie?” Shizuo growled.

“That first thing,” Izaya rolled his eyes. “You really think I would have time for multiple partners? You’ve already compromised my sleep showing up so late every day.”

“If I find out that you—”

“Then _what_ , Shizu-chan? Would you like to go to the city hall and file for your ownership of me?”

Shizuo’s face contorted at the question. “No! I just won’t do it with you anymore,” he said, shaking hands searching his pockets. Adrenaline still seemed to dominate his bloodstream. He lit a cigarette, though it took him a few tries to get the trembling flame going. “We don’t always use a condom, you fuck.”

“Let’s go make use of all that steam,” Izaya sighed, throwing one last look at the building that would fall any moment now. He needed to get Shizuo out of the area before he witnessed it.

Shizuo followed after him, silently fuming.

 

!

 

He loved it when Shizuo was angry during sex. It never crossed the line to become actually hurtful or health threatening, but passion burned in Shizuo’s every move.

The moment Izaya stepped foot into his apartment, he was shoved to the wall, hard surface hitting the back of his head. “Ow,” he whimpered as Shizuo pressed himself against him. “Are you going to fuck me or are you going to kill me?”

He loved it when Shizuo said it out loud. His growl was a menacing promise. “I’ll fuck the shit out of you.”

They had done a lot of things by now, but kissing was one of the few things they had never even attempted. Shizuo pinned him into the mattress, his weight shoving Izaya’s legs up against his chest. His shoulders embedded themselves into the back of Izaya’s knees. The rhythm was good, fulfilling. The thickness of the cock inside stretched him out, the heat from the friction burning the walls of his entrance in an overwhelming way. In those moments Izaya couldn’t really think of anything, the blinding waves of pleasure snapping all threads of rational thought.

His fingers always curled through Shizuo’s hair because during sex was the only time he got to play with those stupid blond locks. Shizuo’s face was buried in the mattress past Izaya’s head, and though their cheeks almost touched, kissing didn’t seem to even cross Shizuo’s mind.

One final violent thrust, and Izaya felt Shizuo's cock twitch and contract inside of him, the sound of Shizuo's muffled groan by his ear. Something hot spurted within him and he knew he was filling up with Shizuo’s sperm. The thought and the sensation aroused him to almost painful levels, his own cock having received almost no stimulation during that fuck, aside from rubbing against Shizuo’s hard body. In his anger, Shizuo always forgot or didn’t want to help him get off.

With a groan, Shizuo climbed off of him to sit on the edge of the bed, numb fingers reaching for the cigarettes.

 _I fucking hate those cigarettes_ , Izaya thought angrily as he grabbed his own cock and worked on finishing himself off. Shizuo stared at him with an intense frown, but within seconds his features smoothed. He threw aside the pack and leaned forward to shove Izaya’s hands away.

“Hey—” Izaya protested, lifting himself off the mattress by the elbows. He stopped his protest short when Shizuo grabbed his hips to slide him closer to himself and lowered his head to bring his lips around Izaya’s cock. It felt so good, Izaya immediately let a moan slip through when he always tried his best to keep as quiet as possible. It only took five embarrassing seconds of his first blow-job for him to come, and he shot his load inside Shizuo’s mouth, shuddering and desperately wishing against being so aroused. He wanted it to last a little longer.

Shizuo probably didn’t know that he didn’t have to swallow. But since Izaya always did it for him, he didn’t even blink when his mouth began to fill with the stream. He scrupulously gulped it down and licked his lips, eyes only slightly widened, probably judging the taste. Izaya collapsed against the mattress, too exhausted to move.

By habit, his eyes shot to the clock. 8:05 PM. And by habit, Shizuo hurried back to his cigarette pack, lips still glistening with moisture.

“What’s gotten over you?” Izaya asked, voice a little weak.

“Dunno,” Shizuo huffed. “You’ve done it for me a lot, I guess. You came fast,” he noted as he took a drag off the cigarette.

Izaya’s face flushed. He sat up, feeling a stream ooze out of him to soak the sheets. _This feeling is too good,_ he thought tiredly. He wanted it to never end. It was dangerous to dwell on those thoughts, so he focused on the clock instead.

8:07 PM. The invisible wall between the two of them was erected the moment both of them finished. Izaya looked up at the crack in the ceiling, listening to the soft puffs of Shizuo’s smoking.

At 8:09 PM Shizuo got up and left, the residual anger from their earlier chase subconsciously making him finish his smoke faster. Only four minutes this time. Izaya waited for the sound of the door slamming before he reached for the phone and sent an anonymous tip to the police.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING** : There is a rape joke that Izaya uses in his thoughts, a light-hearted one of sorts. Please do not read if you think you could be offended.

II

 

As he entered the fairly dark cell, Izaya had to wonder how it had come to this. It wasn’t the first time he was arrested — he’d gotten arrested on purpose before in order to frame Shizuo — but it was the first time he got here without accounting for it first.

It wasn’t a shock when the detectives came over to his house. Izaya expected to be at least questioned, but he never imagined that he would become the _prime_ suspect of the little impromptu prank he tried to pull on Shizuo. That they would think it was him who killed the woman first and then tried to frame Shizuo for it? That kind of flight of imagination was surprising. He had never pegged policemen to be that creative, but he liked to be surprised, he supposed. They had heard of their constant fights across Ikebukuro. And to be fair, Izaya had attempted to frame Shizuo before — that was on their records, too.

It was a good guess; he had to give them credit for it. It was almost the truth, too. Now both of them were sitting in that tiny-ass cell, with two metal beds lined up against the narrow walls. Iron bars were a joke for someone like Shizuo, but the poor monster was so guilt-stricken by the apparent death he had caused, he hadn’t even moved when he heard the clank of the keys or the screech of the metal gate opening.

Sakoda, the tall wiry detective who escorted him here, nodded at Izaya as he locked the cell. “We’ll question you in a few hours. Sit tight for now, both of you.”

Izaya threw a quick look at Shizuo before he puffed his cheeks with air and acted indignant. “Sakoda-san, I am an upstanding citizen of this country. I pay my taxes and vote. Can’t you see that I’m a victim that was caught in this monster’s insanity? Haven’t you heard of his numerous attempts to kill me!? You can’t leave me in the same cell with him!”

Sakoda’s eyes widened at the show. “I don’t think Heiwajima-san cares about you that much. He hasn’t even looked at you since you arrived. Just wait a couple hours, we should be done with the others soon. You’re not the only case we have today, see.” With those words, he disappeared in the darkness of the corridor, sounds of retreating footsteps echoing through the hollow halls.

When he left, it got rather quiet. Somewhere a few cells down the corridor, he heard other prisoners clamoring but the noise was distant. They were given a solitary cell because Shizuo had apparently beaten up some random thug when he was placed in a group cell.

Izaya scanned Shizuo’s hunched posture. He was sitting on his bed, almost slumping against the wall. Bartender suit frazzled and the white shirt underneath yellowed out, it seemed that he was pulled here from one of those construction jobs he’d picked up recently.

There was barely any life in the defeated eyes.

This was _supposed_ to be what Izaya had been looking forward to. This was why he set Shizuo up, why he led him to believe that his monstrous strength finally had killed a living being. The soul-swallowing guilt on display… It was not as exciting as Izaya had hoped. He dug deep into himself, trying his best to rejoice at the sight, but all he felt was irritation and a bit of boredom. He had to admit it to himself that he must only enjoy seeing Shizuo when the man was on fire, be it from his rage or his lust.

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya called softly, taking a seat on his own bed. The metal railings of the bed dug into his admittedly skinny ass, and he let out an irritated sigh. He could have avoided coming here if he had called his lawyer, but Izaya didn’t deem this hiccup serious enough to warrant a call to one of the best lawyers in the country. That ungrateful leech of the society charged an ungodly hourly rate, too.

Shizuo looked up at the sound of his name, shoulders drooped and eyes dead. “Not—” he started, but his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Not in the mood for your shitty games, flea.”

With those words, he got off the bed and turned around, moving his hands stiffly to lay out the thin mattress that was rolled at the top of his bed. He spread it across the metal frame of the bed, then lied down, facing away from Izaya and towards the wall, using his elbow as a pillow.

Izaya rolled his eyes. For once the beast was acting as predicted, but that brought him no joy. He had two choices from then on: call the detectives to return and clear this entire thing, or torture Shizuo some more.

He wouldn’t be Orihara Izaya if he didn’t go with the latter.

“Don’t beat yourself up so hard, Shizu-chan,” he murmured, leaning forward a little so his quiet voice was sure to reach Shizuo’s ears. “It was bound to happen eventually, right? That monstrous strength of yours… when a bear goes running around, is it really surprising that ants get squashed?”

Shizuo didn’t answer, didn’t even flinch.

Izaya continued. “I heard it was an old woman anyway. Like soon to be ninety kind of old. Imagine if it was a young child instead? That would have been so much worse.”

Shizuo’s growl was like the sound of low thunder, as he buried his head deeper into his sleeve, as if he was trying to shut Izaya out.

“It _could_ have happened,” Izaya intoned, pretending to be musing over the possibility. “It really could. Don’t you ever think of consequences, Shizu-chan?”

“When you go around throwing vending machines at me, don’t you ever think about accidents?”

“One day you will hit a passerby, you know. Not everyone is like you and me, Shizu-chan.”

“SHUT UP!” Shizuo finally yelled as he got off the bed. “Shut the fuck up, Izaya!”

Izaya tensed, pulling up his legs and preparing to jump away from where he was sitting, but Shizuo didn’t go for a punch. He breathed hard, glaring at Izaya, but didn’t move. “You think I don’t fucking know that?” he asked, his voice strained. “It already fucking happened! A woman _died_ , flea. I don’t remember what we did in that building. I never usually—” he cut himself short, trailing off.

“You never usually what?”

“Just fuck off please,” Shizuo grumbled as he turned to face the wall again. He curled up on the bed, self-loathing dripping from his every movement.

 _This isn’t fun at all,_ Izaya thought as he laid out his own mattress. Shizuo wasn’t even angry at him, directing all of his hatred towards himself. He paused, looking at the thin mattress, then turned his attention to Shizuo again.

Carefully, he sat himself down by Shizuo’s side. Shizuo didn’t react to Izaya assuming a seat on his bed. He was lying on his stomach, face buried over his folded arms. With a sigh, Izaya reached out and ran a hand through the dirty hair. It was a real mess, tangled locks sticking out more than usual.

“Where’s the fire, Shizu-chan?” he purred as he leaned in. “Why don’t you blame me? I was the one who riled you up enough for you to chase me through that building.”

“You think I _don’t_ want to blame you?” Shizuo groaned into his arms. “I just…” he sat up and turned to face him. “I can’t pin this one on you. This is me. Yeah, you’re a shitty flea and make me worse, but this is still _me_. My rage killed that woman.”

The trembling shock in Shizuo’s eyes irritated Izaya even more. “Oh, get over yourself,” he almost hissed. “You’re supposed to blame _me_.”

He was going to try and redirect Shizuo’s hatred towards himself, but Shizuo caught him off-guard by grabbing ahold of his furcoat’s collar. With a small yelp, Izaya fell forward, landing against Shizuo’s chest. “When are they coming back?” Shizuo asked, clearly meaning the detectives.

Izaya fought off the hold on him, but Shizuo’s grip was iron. “A couple hours,” Izaya said, pushing his arms off the chest. He had no knives, so he was completely powerless in the face of the bundle of muscle in front of him. “Let me go,” he demanded loudly, hoping that the guards would hear them. It was a mistake for them to be in the same cell. Shizuo could rarely keep his hands off of him when it was just the two of them. Not even the the insane levels of guilt he was going through could prevent him from—

His eyes widened when he realized Shizuo wasn’t trying to undress him. He held Izaya close, so close that his head was pushed past Shizuo’s shoulder, his chin resting over it, but all Shizuo did was hold onto him. It was a full-fledged, disgusting _hug_.

“What the hell, Shizu-chan,” Izaya hissed into his ear. “Snap out of your—”

“Just shut the fuck up.”

Izaya wiggled some more, trying to find an opening in the embrace or some leverage to use, but he was really kidding himself. Shizuo was immovable when he wanted to be. With a long put-on sigh, Izaya relaxed in the grip because it hurt to resist it. His ribs were feeling more than a little crushed, and there were probably bruises forming where Shizuo’s arms draped around him, digging into his body.

“Can we go back to having sex?” Izaya tried to steer him in a different direction. Sex he could do with.

No response.

 _Ah, it hurts,_ Izaya thought as he tried to find a way to turn this upside down. It was maddening, to be caught in a place that he had no chance of escaping. It was like a rape-hug. He never consented to it. He didn’t want it. It didn’t feel good.

The weird thing was he knew Shizuo was aroused, he could feel the form of the bulge in his pants. Why the animal didn’t act on his most primal desire was beyond Izaya. Countless times Shizuo had come to his apartment by now, and not once did Izaya refuse him.

It took around thirty minutes for Shizuo to move to break the embrace. All this time Izaya tried to think of something that would break the spell Shizuo was under, but nothing really worked. He was almost on the verge of confessing that the woman didn’t die because of Shizuo, but he was kind of scared for himself. He didn’t know that Shizuo wouldn’t just get really angry and kill him instead.

Izaya almost managed to break free when Shizuo loosened his arms. His body ached from the pressure — he knew that there must have been a horizontal stripe of bruises running across his arms and back and maybe shoulders from where Shizuo’s arms locked around him. He didn’t quite get to freedom though — Shizuo simply forced him to turn around, readjusting the hold in a way where Izaya was facing away from him, his back pressed into Shizuo’s chest.

“I don’t consent to this!” Izaya chirped a declaration. “Please don’t rape me.”

“Really?” came Shizuo’s quiet, confused voice. “You said, and I quote, _can we go back to having sex_.”

“That was half an hour ago. You missed your chance,” Izaya smiled in profile, triumphant. Shizuo most certainly would have to let him go now.

“Ah, okay. That’s fine,” Shizuo sounded a little deflated, but he continued holding him. His nose was pressed against Izaya’s shoulder, his breathing heavy from the arousal he was feeling.

To his great dissatisfaction, Izaya realized that Shizuo was going to just hold him now. Sex was definitely better than something that so terribly resembled a hug.

“Fuck,” he said, resigning. “Anything is better than this. _Fine_. Fuck me.” His eyes darted to the dark corridor as he said those words. He wondered if they had time for a quick fuck. They had to be discreet.

Shizuo didn’t need to be told twice. Clumsily, he reached for Izaya’s zipper, flexing his arms in a way where the smaller man would still be pinned in the hold. Izaya almost gasped when Shizuo’s hands freed his half-hard erection, running up and down over the material of his boxer briefs.

“Shit,” he quietly cussed and arched back into Shizuo’s crotch. “Make it quick before someone comes back.”

He had more freedom of movement, so he slid his briefs down, chills running down his body now that his ass was exposed. It was quite cold in the cell, especially since he was feeling so warm after being held for half an hour. Shizuo unbuckled his own pants, and strong arms pushed Izaya back down, his ass landing on Shizuo’s erection.

“Wait,” Izaya whispered and turned around. Hesitant, Shizuo let him go, though his hand clutched the material of Izaya’s v-neck shirt as if he didn’t want him to leave. Izaya quickly scanned the corridor before he lowered himself on his knees, wrapping his lips around Shizuo’s cock. Shizuo immediately let out a groan, and Izaya looked up to hiss out, “ _Be quiet_!”

He needed to make Shizuo wetter if they planned to see this through the end. More of a moistening job than a blow-job, Izaya worked his mouth around him, for once not minding the excess of saliva, even encouraging it. When he deemed it enough, he got back up, pants and briefs bunched up around his thighs and felt Shizuo arms wrap around him from behind. Shizuo licked his fingers — he’d done it before — and brushed his wet fingers inside of Izaya’s thighs. _Fuck_ , Izaya thought as he trembled a little as the fingers touched his entrance. They massaged the ring of muscles for a bit, and impatient, Izaya angled himself down to start the actual act. They didn’t have the luxury of time.

Shizuo was impatient, too, because he pushed Izaya down on himself a little too roughly. Izaya bit down on his lip as Shizuo started pushing into him. It was a lot less lubrication than they were used to. He threw the back of his head against Shizuo’s shoulder, trying to relax, and Shizuo took no time to run his mouth along his craned neck. That caught Izaya by surprise, because Shizuo rarely kissed his body. His hot mouth was suckling, almost biting on Izaya's neck, and the new sensations distracted Izaya from what was going down below. When he came to his senses, he realized to his horror that he was moaning out loud and that Shizuo was fully buried within him. He felt the hard base of the cock against his ass cheeks, felt that entire thing pulsating inside of him. It was so overwhelming, his own cock twitched, painfully hard and begging for attention.

Shizuo slowly recoiled his hips and used his arms to push Izaya up. Izaya was _meaning_ to help, but his legs were shaky, quivering and barely obeying him. He felt _impaled_. They had never done it in this position before. Eventually Shizuo had to lift him off himself with sheer strength and then he rammed him down, forcing another loud moan out of Izaya’s mouth. It was too much. The way it felt when the thing almost slipped out of him, the way it felt when it slammed back in…

“ _Be quiet_ , yeah?” Shizuo’s grinning voice breathed over his neck. Izaya wanted to tell him to shut up, but he was too weak to say anything. He pushed himself off Shizuo’s thighs to help with the steady rhythm, even though his entire body was shaking with weakness. _Why am I the one losing it_ , thoughts ran through Izaya’s panicking mind. Shizuo seemed so terribly in control, his strong arms guiding Izaya’s body and his voice only a little huskier than usual.

They needed to make it quick. Shizuo’s stamina was inhuman and sometimes he could go on for almost an hour if he wanted to, but even he realized that their time was limited. Long, thorough thrusts steadily turned into quick, rough ones, and within minutes Shizuo came inside of him, one hand gripping onto Izaya’s hipbone, another running up and down Izaya’s erection. With a grunt, Izaya came to the sensation of being filled up, his favorite sensation, spilling all over Shizuo’s fingers.

He felt weak, so so so weak, but he quickly jerked away before Shizuo could reestablish the hold on him. This whole sex act was only a diversion, as far as he was concerned. He just needed his freedom again. Using the toilet paper that was kindly provided for them, he cleaned off his fingers and the inside of his thighs and ass before pulling his pants back on. He looked down the corridor; it was empty and dark. Some of the neighboring cells probably heard him moaning, but as long as they didn’t see anything, Izaya was content. He was still puzzled by his loss of control during sex; he was usually much better at concealing his gasps and moans.

Even though he just finished, Izaya felt so thoroughly fucked and stimulated in all kinds of ways, he really just wanted to go back to Shizuo. Such disgusting impulses affronted him, and he paused to analyze his state. His body was aching both from the bruises he received and the satisfaction still running down his skin in the form of residual goosebumps. It was confusing. Izaya hated surrendering to his bodily pleasures, but he could never resist Shizuo.

When he turned to look at Shizuo, the man was sitting still, head lowered and shoulders hunched. “Clean yourself up, Shizu-chan,” Izaya insisted, eyes falling on Shizuo’s exposed thighs. It glistened with moisture, still half-hard. Izaya handed him the toilet roll, keeping a fair amount of distance away from him. Shizuo snatched it, slowly cleaning himself off. He never really cared much about cleanliness.

“Feel better?” Izaya asked mockingly, thankful that his voice sounded normal.

Shizuo said nothing and slowly turned around to lie down again. It was strange seeing Shizuo around after they had both finished. There were no cigarettes in the picture, and Shizuo wasn’t leaving. Izaya walked back to his bed, still feeling thoroughly stretched out. It felt so, so good.

And so empty.

Something was missing.

He remembered what he’d told the old woman, that the cigarettes were just a symptom of something bigger. Tiredly, he turned to the book he’d brought with himself, his mind refusing to deal with the conflicting colors of his own emotions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rather short chapter, but no more p0rn after this.. Just angst, long talks and violent kisses. 
> 
> (Porn is so hard to write, especially when your beta replaces all instances of cock with synonyms from this list http://namingschemes.com/Penis_Synonyms )


	3. Chapter 3

III

 

_I’m never framing Shizu-chan again._

Those were Izaya’s thoughts as he flipped page after page, his eyes going back to look at Shizuo’s defeated posture. There was not an ounce of sympathy in him, but apparently emotionally dead animals did nothing for him.

He was straining his vision a little reading in the poorly lit cell, but it was better than idling. Idling was the worst, because it let his mind drift into unpleasant territory. Shizuo was so out of it, he was practically glued to the bed, lying still with his face down. Sex didn’t seem to lift his spirits in the least bit, perhaps worsening his already wildly festering guilt. He became catatonic, deaf to Izaya’s insults and taunts, and unresponsive to pokes and stabs.

Izaya almost jumped up in excitement when Sakoda came back. He stopped by the bars, nodding at Izaya and stretching his neck out to see where Shizuo was.

“Alright guys, let’s get going,” he said amiably as he opened the cell. Izaya skipped forward, stuffing his small book behind the belt-line of his pants. “The Little Prince, huh?” Sakoda seemed to recognize the book.

“Detectives are so well-read these days,” Izaya widened his eyes, pretending to be impressed. He cast a sideglance at Shizuo, murmuring to himself a quote from the book that stuck with him. “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

Sakoda, who didn’t hear him, turned to look at Shizuo.

“Heiwajima-san, it’s time,” he announced with a cough. There was an air of apprehension in his features when he interacted with Shizuo. A man who could destroy an entire building was bound to alarm a person, Izaya supposed. Shizuo was so extraordinary, and yet Izaya had never really thought of him as such. That inhuman strength never registered as Shizuo’s defining characteristic in his mind. His thoughts darkened a little when he thought back on the day they had met — how Shizuo instantly sensed who Izaya was and his entire essence rejected him within seconds.

That they could have such passionate sex now was a little strange even for Izaya.

Shoulders drooped, Shizuo followed them like a ghost, staring down at his feet.

“Taking it hard, hmm?” Sakoda took a quick look at Shizuo.

Izaya waved his hand. “You want your murderers to repent, don’t you?”

“He’s not a murderer though,” Sakoda corrected him a little pedantically.

“Hmm?” Izaya frowned. “Are you still on your crazy theory that I was the one to kill the poor old woman?”

“Heiwajima-san just isn’t a murderer in any scenario. At worst, it’s a crazy case of negligence. It’ll blow up in the media if it goes down that way. A man collapses an abandoned building with bare fists?" Sakoda whistled, raising his eyes to the ceiling as if imagining the newspaper titles. “But yeah, worst we could put on him is manslaughter.”

Izaya narrowed his eyes, deep in thought. The results of the autopsy should be back at some point, and then they would learn that the rubble didn’t kill the woman. He had never seriously intended to put Shizu-chan in jail, but for now he had to play it as though he truly believed Shizuo to be a dangerous individual.

“Well, if you ask me, our city is safer if someone like him is isolated!” he sang merrily, wondering if Shizuo could hear him. Shizuo didn’t react, and Izaya sulked his shoulders a little, his mood dampening. The sight of a guilty animal was just too _wrong_.

 

_Interrogation #1: Heiwajima Shizuo_

 

“State your name for the record, please,” Sakoda asked as he pressed the recorder. Hidaka, the second detective on the case, slumped in the uncomfortable chair. He was a little more overweight than his partner, and as a result he fussed a lot less, preserving energy. Sakoda, on the other hand, was going back and forth between different sheets of paper, lining up a set of photographs, adjusting the tape recorder.

“Heiwajima Shizuo,” Shizuo said plainly as he stared through the desk. He didn’t see a point to this questioning; he had already admitted guilt on paper.

“Ironic name, heh?” Sakoda tried for a joke in an attempt to lighten up the mood. The Ikebukuro’s strongest was taking the incident unbelievably hard.

“Not really,” Shizuo shot him down with a serious glare. “I like peace.”

“Let’s talk about what happened,” Sakoda continued with an inaudible sigh. “August 27th. What happened on that day? Start from the beginning.”

“Woke up, went to do my job. Debt collector’s bodyguard of sorts,” Shizuo clarified when Sakoda shot a questioning look his way. He was scribbling down something in his notepad. “It’s not the only job I have, though. If you want irony, you could laugh at the fact that I work for a debt collecting agency when my own debt to the city is through the roof,” he scoffed, thinking back on the night Izaya had informed him that it was impossible for him to pay off his debt. “Izaya even said that I couldn’t pay it back before I died.”

Sakoda and Hidaka exchanged a look. “We’ll ask you about Orihara Izaya in a second. For now just go on about your day if you can.”

“Right,” Shizuo nodded. He genuinely wished to cooperate with the two men in front of him. He had nothing but deep respect for those who did their duty of protecting the law. “After working with Tom, I was on my way to my other job to pull some extra hours, but Izaya stopped by. He likes to make my life hell by showing up in Ikebukuro. He knows I can’t stand it when he’s brewing trouble in my district.”

“Do you feel compelled to protect Ikebukuro from him?”

“Yeah.”

“Is Orihara-san a dangerous person?”

“Fuck yeah,” Shizuo said, flexing his hands involuntarily. Thinking about Izaya always put him in a rather angry mood. “He’s the most dangerous person I know.”

“What makes you say that? Have you seen him doing anything illegal?”

“Not directly, no,” Shizuo said. “But I know he does tons of sketchy stuff. You guys should monitor him or something.”

“We can’t without probable cause,” Sakoda smiled apologetically. “So Orihara-san came by, and you decided to chase him out. That’s what you guys do, right?”

“What we do?” Shizuo repeated. “Yeah, I guess so. Weird way to phrase it. Like it’s a game or something.”

“Well, in all the years of chasing, neither of you harmed the other very seriously, is that not right?”

“Not seriously, no. Damn flea is real fast.”

“Is that the reason you haven’t managed to catch him?”

“Yeah.”

“What would you do if you caught him?”

“Beat him up, ‘course.”

Sakoda harrumphed, looking over his notes. “Are you a good liar, Heiwajima-san?”

“No,” Shizuo looked up, confused. “What?”

“A number of witnesses said they saw you and Orihara Izaya leaving together after the building was compromised.”

Shizuo froze, and for the first time since the detectives saw him, he looked like an actual criminal. Cautious eyes darted from one detective to another, a glint of shame and fear burning in them. His posture stiffened, as if he was caught red-handed in the middle of a heinous act.

“Y-Yeah, we did leave together,” Shizuo said as he rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, as if he was suddenly sweating.

“Where did you go?”

“To his place,” Shizuo said blandly. He was supposed to answer all questions, as far as he was concerned. He didn’t know that he absolutely didn’t have to, but he was naive and thought that the detectives were doing their job. “In Shinjuku,” he diligently clarified, dying a little inside.

Sakoda and Hidaka exchanged another confounded glance. “You don’t seem like a liar, Heiwajima-san,” Sakoda said gently, but he was only pretending to be nice. In reality, he was burning up from curiosity, just like his partner who was now leaning in instead of slumping in his chair. “By any chance, are you implying that you and Orihara—?”

“We, uh,” Shizuo searched for the right word. “We do things sometimes, yeah. Blow off steam.” He didn’t want to say the words _we fuck_ on the record. “Sexual relationship,” he finally muttered, swallowing sharply from the stress he was under. It was the first time he had verbalized what he had with Izaya.

“So when you chase him around Ikebukuro, is it all for show?”

“ _No_ ,” Shizuo shook his head vehemently. “I honestly don’t want him in Ikebukuro.”

“But you in essence ‘caught’ him on August 27th. You didn’t beat him up,” Sakoda said, pretending to be chewing out the details. “You actually gave him what I assume was a good few hours of fun?”

Shizuo’s free hand slammed down, creating a crater in the metal of the desk in front of him. “Sakoda-san,” he growled. “You trying to make fun of me? Cause if you are—”

“No, no,” Sakoda raised his hands in defense, scared of unleashing the monster. Handcuffs wouldn’t stop a man who destroyed a building. “Please don’t take this the wrong way. We just need to establish your relationship with Orihara Izaya. We have a good reason to suspect that he may have been responsible for Matsuda’s death. He either caused her death, or killed her in advance, in order to frame you for it. We’re still waiting on the results of the autopsy to know for sure.”

Matsuda was the old woman, Shizuo realized.

“Really,” he said, processing the information. “I wouldn’t put it past the flea, but…”

“But?”

“It’s kind of a stretch, I guess? He’s framed me before, but…” Shizuo paused to think, not sure of where he was going.

“You don’t think he’d do it now, because of—” Sakoda tried to pick up Shizuo’s train of thought. It was quite obvious what was on the blond man’s mind, but it seemed unreasonably hard for him to voice, as if he was not quite in terms with it.

“Don’t say it out loud,” Shizuo interrupted him, affronted. He didn’t want to hear it. “But yeah, something along those lines, I guess. It feels like things are a bit different now. I don’t think Izaya is involved. He likes running, in general… He’s really good at it, too. That day he ran from me, I chased him and demolished the building. That’s on me. It’s my negligence that killed that woman. That’s all there is to it, really,” he concluded, looking down on his tightly clasped hands.

“I see,” Sakoda said, shutting down his notebook. Hidaka sent him a meaningful look, and they moved to wrap it up. “That’d be all for now, Heiwajima-san. Please wait in the hall while we question Orihara-san.”

 

_Interrogation #2: Orihara Izaya_

 

A complete opposite of Heiwajima Shizuo, Orihara Izaya sat in his chair relaxed, one leg crossed over another and arm draped over the back of the chair. His head was tilted upwards, cocked a little to the side, and he was looking down at them when he spoke. His smile was cold, more of a show of teeth rather than a friendly feature.

“Orihara Izaya,” he drawled his own name. “Interesting name, don’t you think? My parents were quite creative.”

Sakoda analyzed the smaller man in front of them. Unlike with Heiwajima Shizuo, Sakoda didn’t see a compelling need to cuff him to the desk. Orihara Izaya didn’t seem the type to lash out physically, nor did he pose any meaningful threat based on his light constitution.

“Yes, it stands out,” Sakoda said after he decided against bothering with the handcuffs. “How old are you, Orihara-san?” he asked in passing as he laid out the file on Orihara Izaya in front of himself. A number of false arrests in the past, but nothing serious.

“I’d say I was 24, but you would jump on the chance to accuse me of lying, so I’ll go with the truth. I’m 27,” Izaya said with an airy sigh, as if he was upset to give his age away.

“Your age is of concern to you? Most men—”

“Are you saying only women would fuss over their appearance and age?” Izaya shook his head in judgment. “How sexist of you, Sakoda-san.”

“No, that wasn’t what I was trying to say,” Sakoda almost dropped his coffee. “Anyway,” he messed with the recorder, setting it up-right by Izaya’s side of the table. “It says here you’re an information broker.”

“That I am,” Izaya nodded.

“What does an information broker do?”

“At the core of it? I’d say I help people,” Izaya said with a charming smile.

“By collecting information?”

“Well, if I want to help people, I need to know them, don’t you think? I have to know their needs, desires, aspirations… collecting data is just something I _have_ to do, so I can be as useful as possible when people come to me for help.” Izaya readily explained while analyzing his nails. They were growing past his preferred length, so he’d need to file them soon.

Sakoda scrawled a few hurried sentences before Hidaka let out an exasperated sigh. He didn’t seem amused by Izaya’s antics, so he plucked out a photograph from the pile of sheets they had on the desk and threw it on top.

“Let’s talk about Matsuda Toshiko,” he prompted the main line of inquiry. His voice was monotone, void of any particular emotion.

“Who?” Izaya blinked. He’d never heard the name before.

“The lady that died. Don’t pretend like you don’t know her, Orihara-san,” Sakoda reprimanded him. “Many families have seen the two of you talking by the playground.”

Hidaka slid the photograph across the table, and Izaya saw the familiar expression of a woman whose eyes were too kind.

“Ah, so that was her name.”

It felt strange to put a name to her after all that time they had spent talking. “Matsuda Toshiko,” Izaya repeated the name, feeling a little melancholic. “Yeah, I’ve talked to her quite a lot. Her death moved me in more ways than I can describe,” he lied breezily.

“What did you usually talk about?”

 _Mostly about Shizu-chan_ , Izaya thought to himself, but said another thing out loud. “We had a lot in common. For example, we were both scared of dying.”

That last part wasn’t even a lie. They discussed afterlife and reincarnation, and Izaya didn’t even make fun of her for fearing death. He could relate. His lack of interest in her allowed him to be more open about it than usual.

“How did you meet?”

“Ah, it’s a good story. A couple hooligans were being mean to her, and yours truly came to her rescue.”

Sakoda’s eyes lit up with admiration before he frowned, realizing it probably wasn’t true. “Is that true, Orihara-san?” he sighed.

“Nope,” Izaya chirped innocently.

“It’s so easy for you to lie. Is there any point in asking you questions?”

“You tell me, Sakoda-san,” Izaya parted his hands. “How good of a detective are you? Apparently not that good, if you’re giving up this easily,” Izaya weakly taunted him, dipping the words with a moderate dose of contempt. He didn’t particularly care about them, so he wasn’t really going full out on them. They bored him; Sakoda was a hard-working simpleton who was mediocre at his job, while Hidaka was too lazy, almost invisible in his apathy.

“Alright. So you knew her fairly well, and you also knew where she lived. That’s a confirmed fact for us because people had seen you bring groceries to her doorstep. Is that why you goaded Heiwajima-san into following you there? Did you intend for her to die under the rubble like that?”

Izaya gasped, bringing his hand to his mouth. “How could you say something like that? That hurts my feelings, Sakoda-san. You’ve seen how scary Shizu-chan is! I was running from him in panic, because if he ever lays a hand on me, my body would be torn in pieces.”

“Oh, is that so,” Sakoda-san narrowed his eyes. “That’s interesting, because Heiwajima-san denied ever laying a hand on you. In fact, he told us that you actually let him tear you apart quite often, in a different sense of the verb.” He paused after those words for effect, analyzing Izaya’s reaction to the highly inappropriate insinuation.

There was no reaction to observe, though. Izaya’s smile didn’t even waver as his daunting gaze remained locked with Sakoda’s. That was his outer shell; on the inside, he was burning up with quiet rage. He highly doubted Shizuo phrased it that way when he talked to the detectives. They most likely played on Shizuo’s unyielding belief that the law was absolutely good, fishing out that information for no reason other than to entertain themselves. For Izaya, that was equivalent to a glove slapped into his face, a call for action. They dared to pry into his personal life, and they managed to manipulate Shizu-chan.

Manipulating the beast was something that Izaya had never been capable of — Shizuo never trusted his words, rendering himself immune to Izaya’s mind games. That a couple of brain-dead detectives abused Shizuo’s naive trust irritated him, and he knew he was going to punish them for doing that.

“Oh, you mean sex,” Izaya continued without a falter. “Yes, Shizu-chan is amazing in bed. It’s not surprising that the best sex would come from someone so in touch with their inner animal, is it? That doesn’t mean that on that day I wasn’t genuinely scared. Shizu-chan’s unpredictable, you see.”

“We’re supposed to believe that?” Sakoda gave a short laugh, turning to Hidaka for solidarity. “The two of you are in a stable sexual relationship, and you think we’re gonna buy that you were scared of him?”

“Okay, let’s assume I wasn’t,” Izaya nodded readily. “Like you said, we’re in a stable sexual relationship. Why would I try and frame my sexual partner?”

“Well, it’s known in Ikebukuro that you’ve had a conflict that’s lasted for years…”

“But according to you, there is no conflict. I wasn’t running away from him, I wasn’t scared.”

Sakoda put down his notepad. “You’re stalling, Orihara-san. The question is, what are you waiting for?”

“Why don’t you bring Shizu-chan in here?” Izaya asked, leaning back in his chair. “I’ll tell you something if he comes in.”

The detectives looked at each other, then seemed to come to an agreement. Hidaka slipped out of his chair with an impressive grace for someone with his heavy build. Minutes later he returned with Shizuo following him, looking around himself in confusion. Izaya got up from his chair when Shizuo walked in and gestured him to sit down.

“What’s going on, flea?” Shizuo looked at him in question, lowering himself in the seat. Sakoda promptly cuffed him to the desk, his tense body giving away his anxiety for being around a man who could uproot a tree.

“Not much, Shizu-chan,” Izaya said, jumping to sit on the iron desk in front of him. “You told our new friends what we do together.”

Shizuo raised his hand, tugging at the chains that bound him to the desk. His hand froze in the air when he heard Izaya’s words. “Yeah,” he said, looking up almost guiltily. “Sorry. They said it was related to their investigation.”

“Did they actually say that?”

“Well, no,” Shizuo said, a soft frown spilling over his features. “But I assumed so; they wouldn’t ask otherwise.”

“Oh, but it wasn’t related,” Izaya cooed. “They asked you that because they were curious, Shizu-chan.”

He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around Shizuo’s tense shoulders, still seated on the desk. Shizuo shoved back in his seat, anger flaring in his eyes. His eyes shot back to the detectives. Such public display of intimacy would normally cause him to go for a solid punch, but the presence of police in the room restrained his temper.

“I-Izaya, the fuck is going on here?” he snarled in a low voice instead. He tried to shake off Izaya’s embrace, but it was a little hard considering the small distance between the chair and the desk.

Sakoda and Hidaka viewed the little scene with their eyes wide in amazement. It was one thing to suspect that the two of them were in a relationship, and entirely another to witness it with their own eyes. With a heavy sigh, Hidaka handed Sakoda a folded bill. “Goddamn,” was all he said as he watched Orihara Izaya himself leaning in to whisper something in Heiwajima Shizuo’s ear. “Can’t believe I lost another bet to you.”

The next thing they saw was Izaya bolting away from Shizuo with startling speed. It reminded them of action scenes in movies where things would slow down to a snail speed, except it was their brains that lagged to keep up with the explosion that was about to happen. Izaya slipped past them, his smile growing wider by the second, and then they were left alone with an enraged beast inside the room. Shizuo shattered the chains that bound him to the desk and with a loud, eardrum-piercing roar lifted the desk high up in the air even though it was originally bolted to the floor. The transformation on display was arresting; with awe they watched a quiet, guilt-ridden man become so furious that he broke the desk in half as if was made out of brittle plastic.

A quick slap on the back, “ _you take care of Heiwajima!_ ”, and Hidaka dashed to run after the smaller man. Sakoda remained one-on-one with the beast of Ikebukuro, and not even the fact that he possessed a firearm could alleviate the rush of goosebumps that streamed down his panicking body.

 

!

 

Shizuo gripped onto the iron bars, indenting the dip of his fingers onto them. Those iron bars now separated the two of them because they were put in different cells this time, and Shizuo was sitting on the floor, glowering at him and breathing fire. Back in the interrogation room, Izaya had told him that he _did_ actually frame him. Shizuo’s wonderfully violent reaction exceeded all of his expectations. He did expect Shizuo to lose it, but the beast went as far as to destroy not only the interrogation room itself, but a couple of other neighboring rooms. Now both of them were thrown back in jail for destruction of city property and assault on police officers.

The outburst played into Izaya’s hand for two reasons. First, he wanted to show the detectives that Shizuo really _was_ uncontrollable during his rage fits. Secondly, he wanted to give them a little scare for having abused Shizuo’s trust. He reasoned that from then on they would stay away from Shizuo, and that proved true — once he was brought here, they hurried to get the hell away from the monster.

“Why the _fuck_ would you do that, Izaya?” Shizuo demanded. He sat so close to the bars, they were digging into his cheeks.

Izaya slithered off the metal bed, slipping his book back into his pocket. “I did it because I hate you, Shizu-chan. I wanted to watch you fall apart under the weight of your guilt.” He murmured those words as he lowered himself in front of the bars, across Shizuo. The concrete floor was hard, but he had to make do with it.

Shizuo’s grip began bending the bars, and they screeched pathetically, curling all too easily under his fingers.

“Careful, Shizu-chan,” Izaya reminded him with an insufferable smile, maintaining a fair distance from him. “You don’t want to destroy any more of their property, do you?”

“Fuck no,” Shizuo spat as he forced himself to let go of the bars. “It’s the only reason I’m still here. Still locked in the cell next to _you_.” He paused before he snarled something else under his breath. “Can’t fucking believe you. I’m so fucking _gullible_.”

“Gullible?” Izaya asked, intrigued. “What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” Shizuo muttered as he looked away for the first time since they were brought here. All this time he’d been trying to burn a hole in Izaya’s head with just a glare alone.

“Tell me, Shizu-chan. How were you gullible?” Izaya leaned in, curious. Shizuo took no time to thread a hand through the bars and grab him by the collar. God, how Izaya wished he had a knife as he felt an unstoppable force yanking him forward. His face collided against the rusty bars, the rough metal scraping his cheeks.

Shizuo tipped forward as he brought Izaya closer, banging their foreheads together. Izaya tried to push off the bars to get away but resistance was futile. “I was gullible because I thought _something_ would change,” Shizuo barked into Izaya’s face, warm breath blowing over him and tingling his eyelashes. “But no, you’re the same shitty flea who plays with people’s lives and even people’s _deaths_. It’s not even about framing me. I’m so fucking used to you screwing with me, that’s not even surprising anymore. But playing on an old woman’s _suicide_? Just holy _fucking_ shit, Izaya!”

Spitting those words, Shizuo shoved him forward, and the smaller man was sent to collapse on the floor. He rose back up, adjusting his collar and lightly rubbing at his stinging cheeks. His eyes darted to the clock hovering above the cell’s door.

_9:18 PM._

It was going to be one long night, Izaya thought a little tiredly. Shizuo sat in front of him, still eying him with that murderous gaze of his, and maybe for the first time ever Izaya didn’t know what kind of mask to wear on his face.

Nothing really seemed right anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nothing really happens this chapter, but it's meant to be transition-y? I couldn't really skip it because it sets up the mood before their night-long talk. hopefully it didn't drag for too long.


	4. Chapter 4

IV

 

_10:10 PM_

Izaya hated Shizuo. Time couldn’t crawl any slower now that the beast was trying to pierce a hole in him with how pointed his stare was. He was sitting by the metal bars, eying his every movement, and Izaya stilled the inclination to fidget under the gaze, feeling like he was being stripped. Not in the sexual sense, no. It was more similar to the feeling he got when he first met the blond — Shizuo saw right through him, and the longer he watched him, the more uneasy Izaya grew.

He was trying to read, and of course, he looked completely unaffected — maintaining his perfect composure came as second-nature to him, and something as basic as a stare would never be enough to break the walls of his carefully crafted disguise. But underneath the smile and the pretense of being engaged in the text of the book, Izaya was _thinking_ , mulling on how to get this feeling to stop.

He decided to shift gears, because the current mood in the air was doing nothing for him. Two could play this game. He snapped his book shut, got up from the steel of the bed and gracefully lowered himself in front of Shizuo, far enough that Shizuo couldn’t reach him, but close enough that he thought he might be able to. Their gaze locked, the air charging up, and the way their eyes met was just too damn right — they locked themselves into a staring battle like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle comfortably snugged into a joined union. Izaya was all smiles and he knew his eyes were shining with glee; Shizuo was nothing but deep frowns, and he radiated murder.

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya hummed as he smiled wider. “Why so angry? We’ll be out of here in the morning, most likely. Don’t fret so hard. Get some sleep.”

Shizuo looked like he wanted to spit, but his jaw was clenched shut. A muscle flexed in it before he attempted to talk. “Too fucking angry to sleep.”

It was cute how strained his speech sounded under all that wrath.

A liar was something that Shizuo had never been. Reading his emotions wasn’t even reading; Izaya didn’t need to make out the letters and try to make sense of them. With Shizuo, you could always _look_ and see the direct reflections of his inner state. He was an open book, and normally a person like that would land in the base of Izaya’s palm faster than a tumbleweed sifted through a desert, but Shizuo never gave him any room. He never gave Izaya any trust, never did what Izaya wanted. That was why Shizuo grated Izaya’s very existence.

“So are you planning to stare at me for the rest of the night?” Izaya asked. “Am I that pretty?”

Shizuo didn’t answer, and Izaya knew why. He wouldn’t lie and say no, Izaya wasn't pretty, but he was never going to voice the truth either. Not when it came to Izaya. Truth rarely entered Izaya’s choice of words, and Shizuo might not realize it, but he attempted to match that. He tried to give Izaya as little of himself as Izaya handed in return, and in the end, they almost never talked aside from words of fire and ice.

This perpetual lack of truth, and perhaps the staleness of their communication, was what prompted Izaya to maybe try something new. They were stuck together for the entire night, and neither of them blinked any sleep, so why not? He reasoned it promised to be fun, expecting it to go horribly wrong and only further derail the train that was Shizuo’s rage, but deep inside he knew this desire was birthed by that itch that he hadn’t been able to scratch. He hurriedly swatted the thought away before he could focus in on it. He was whimsical, he was free, he could do whatever he wanted. Tonight, talking was just one of those things. After all, whoever said Izaya had to be the one to do the talking?

“Hey, Shizu-chan, do you wanna play a game?”

Shizuo must have been just as bored as he was, because his intense eyes betrayed a flicker of a question, and that’s all Izaya needed, really. Just a small spark of interest, and he could take it from there, build a flame that might engulf them both and prove too strong to be extinguished. “It’s called truth or dare,” Izaya informed him, scooting a little closer to the bars. “When one party—”

“I know what the game is,” Shizuo interrupted him with a bark. “Fine. Nothing to do here anyway. You start. Truth or dare, Izaya-kun,” he rasped and looked triumphant that he got to make the first move.

“Dare,” Izaya sighed the answer. As if he would ever choose the other.

“Slap yourself in the face,” came Shizuo’s immediate order, and there was so little surprise in it, Izaya laughed out loud.

He slapped himself in the face hard enough to leave a red imprint, because he knew Shizuo would feel a pinch of guilt later on. For now Shizuo looked pleased to see Izaya’s small flinch as his own hand slapped against the skin of his cheek, but later on he would feel guilty for sure. After all, that was how they fucked. Quite often Shizuo applied a little too strength when he slammed Izaya against the wall or when he shoved in before Izaya was quite ready. He didn’t care about it in the fire of the moment, but later in the night he would always trace the bruises with a slight touch that bordered on caress, his eyes so intently fixed on them and reflecting the lack of joy at the sight of injury.

“Your turn,” Izaya grinned as he rubbed his cheek, pretending to be more hurt than he was. It stung and felt hot, but he was enjoying himself. He wasn’t quite a masochist, but he could be when the situations called for it, because pain served a function, and sometimes it aligned with his plans and goals.

“Dare,” Shizuo muttered, and the game officially began.

Izaya didn’t quite know why, but three dares later he dared Shizuo to kiss him. Shizuo was still lit up with anger when he shoved back from the bars, face twisting into an expression that resembled disgust. Izaya sighed, pretending to be explaining something that was supposed to be common knowledge. “Come on, Shizu-chan. It’s not a _truth-or-dare_ game if no one makes out.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Shizuo finally agreed after a loaded pause. He hadn’t refused a dare yet, and it was sort of a challenge between them where neither wanted to back down from the other’s requests. To do so would be a sign of weakness.

Izaya’s spirits were uplifted with the beat of the game. It was going so well and promised to grow even more entertaining, and a small part of him was excited to be kissed by Shizuo. He had always vaguely wondered what it would feel like. It seemed strange to have regular sex with another person and never engage in something so socially established in human culture as kissing. He wanted to try it if only for the chance to mock Shizuo for being bad at it.

For some reason, he never quite expected the sharp bite that Shizuo inflicted on him the moment their teeth banged together and their mouths joined. It wasn’t a full-fledged bite -- it was still a poor excuse of a kiss, but Shizuo was so _enraged_ , he didn’t seem to care that he was drawing blood from Izaya’s bottom lip. Izaya sulked, wanting to pull away, but it was yet another battle that they fought and there was no way he was losing it. He tried to match the intensity of Shizuo’s assault on his mouth, but of course, Shizuo would win every time any strength was involved. At the very least, Izaya wouldn’t be the first to withdraw.

The kiss only lasted ten seconds before Shizuo jerked away, his nose scrunched up. There was blood glistening on his lower lip, too, but Izaya knew it was his. He never did manage to bite through Shizuo’s lip. He smiled, feeling the sting of stretched, abused skin of his mouth as he did so, and he knew he would reap the rewards in the near future. Shizuo would surely feel guilty about this. That was all the beast really felt around him, anyway. Anger, disgust, frustration, guilt… All the emotions people hated and wanted to avoid, but Shizuo was drawn to Izaya like a moth whose wings burned away each time because he didn’t know any better.

Neither of them said truth for the next thirty minutes. Dares mostly revolved around embarrassing demands, and pretty soon Izaya was growing a little itchy. It was quite entertaining, but there was something else he could feel a distinct need for. Something else that he started this whole game for.

“Why don’t you bark for me?” Izaya purred the next dare right as Shizuo stopped chuckling after Izaya scribbled _piece of shit_ on his wrist. Shizuo was looking less incensed by now. Some of the dares they engaged in were more innocent in nature and as a result, Shizuo was beginning to relax, the rigidity in his shoulders melting.

“Bark?” he frowned at this one, though.

“Like a dog, Shizu-chan. Woof, woof! Bark like that ten times. And do your best imitation, please,” Izaya waved his stained wrist in front of Shizuo’s face as if to show that he’d been very hard-working at fulfilling his requests. He’d never seen a prettier version of the handwritten vulgarity that Shizuo demanded of him.

Shizuo gave a stiff shrug before he coughed out a few barks. “Feels stupid,” he complained while Izaya laughed.

“You only gave me three barks, Shizu-chan.”

“I don’t wanna bark anymore,” Shizuo refused. “Do a different dare, you get a second turn.”

“Fine,” Izaya said. “At least let me pet you like a dog then.”

Shizuo startled, realizing that he would rather bark. But he couldn't afford to refuse a dare for the second time, especially since Izaya had refused none so far, so reluctantly, he tipped his head down, leaning against the bars. Izaya wasted no time to run a hand through the blond hair that irritated him so much, ruffling it and trying to make it even messier than it already was. Shizuo’s locks were just as wild as he was; everything about the man was so open and honest, Izaya wanted to shave the stupid hair off just so it stopped rubbing him the wrong way.

He didn’t stop playing with it for a good five minutes, fingers entangling deeper and twisting the strands, and by the lack of protest from Shizuo, he didn’t mind. He even leaned in into the touch, and it had dragged on for way too long when Izaya woke up.

In a falter of composure, he jerked his hand back, and before Shizuo could say anything, he grinned. “Truth,” he sang invitingly, a first of the night. Shizuo was so shocked, he forgot that they had just engaged in something weird for the two of them.

“Hm,” he only said as he visibly fell pensive. His lips thinned from how focused he grew, trying to come up with a question. For all Izaya knew, it might be the only truth Shizuo would ever get from him. It was a few minutes later when Shizuo cleared his throat and said, “Name three good things about me.”

The silence that fell into place right after smothered Izaya. He was supposed to laugh out loud, taunt the beast about it, but he was caught off-guard by a request so candid. He never thought Shizuo would ask something that sounded so goddamn vulnerable.

His smile was still on, of course, and eventually he found his voice to give a response that Shizuo wasn’t expecting. He considered weaseling out of it, but he didn’t want to be predictable, especially not in front of someone as primitive as Shizuo.

“Your stupidity is endearing,” Izaya started with the obvious one. It really was adorable how naive Shizuo was with some things, considering the overwhelming power that rested at his fingertips. He remained uncorrupted by it, thought of it as a curse, and Izaya didn’t know if other humans would behave the same if they possessed the range of Shizuo’s abilities. “You’re marginally good at sex,” Izaya continued as he plucked out a half-truth. He might not have anything else to compare it to, and it was way better than ‘marginally good’, but his answer was still true. When something was ‘amazing’, it covered all the ‘good’ quantifiers below it, like the set of all positive integers contained both a million and a one, or at least so Izaya rationalized. “You’re entertaining,” Izaya finished and didn’t care to elaborate on it. The fact that his life was so much more fun with Shizuo in the picture was a grade-A level dangerous thought; he never really paused to dissect it for too long.

Shizuo gaped at him, and for the first time Izaya’s mental process stumbled because he couldn’t quite read Shizuo’s emotions. Whether his response came as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, whether Shizuo expected something different, Izaya didn’t really know. Before Shizuo could collect himself, and more importantly, before Izaya could realize the gravity of the half-truths he let slip through his fingertips, he smirked and said, “Your turn, Shizu-chan.”

“Truth,” Shizuo said automatically, voice a little hoarse. He _would_ say truth right after Izaya did. Izaya gave him something, and Shizuo felt relaxed enough to give something in return, too. Izaya felt pleased that he predicted this course of events, at least.

“Name three good things about me,” Izaya echoed and smiled, pretending that the question was idiotic and he was only repeating it to mock Shizuo. He really should have made fun of Shizuo for asking something so silly; he didn’t really remember why he didn’t jump on the opportunity. It seemed a little too late now.

He glanced at the clock when the silence lasted longer than he anticipated. _11:20 PM_. When the clock struck _11:30 PM_ , Izaya felt irritated. He knew there wasn’t that much good about him, but couldn’t Shizuo come up with something by now? He regretted reflecting the question back at him. He should have asked something more of substance. Something that would be more pertinent or something that would give Izaya even more ammunition against the beast. Not a request that no matter how hard Shizuo dug into himself, he couldn’t seem to fulfill.

Izaya looked like a fool now, and the thought made him laugh out loud. Of course, he would be the one to come up with something good about Shizuo, and not the other way around. Shizuo was such a good person at heart, it rotted Izaya’s teeth with how sweet his core was, but even a kind-hearted person like that couldn’t come up with a single nice thing to say about Izaya. It stung that much more because Shizuo was the only person who saw through him so well.

Izaya laughed in the face of his own self-inflicted defeat, and Shizuo stared at him, his frowned countenance reflecting the heavy thinking that he was doing.

“Quit your fucking laughing,” he grumbled at last, pushing his hair back with his palm. “Here’s three good things about you. First,” he pointed an accusatory finger at him. “you’re delicate. It’s a good thing because I’m not, and I admire things that are beautiful like that,” he said that and almost _choked_ on the words. It was understandably hard for him to verbalize nice things about Izaya, and his veracity was endearing. “For example, your wrists—”

“No need to dwell on the answers,” Izaya hurried to interrupt him before Shizuo complimented him too much. It was simply unsettling that Shizuo had started saying good things in the first place, and even though Izaya knew he was a lot more beautiful than the average human, Shizuo’s recognition of that fact was just a little too unpleasant on his tongue, considering the established hatred between them. Izaya’s ‘good things’ about Shizuo were all backhanded compliments, after all. He wished Shizuo would do the same — it would make more sense considering the dynamic between the two of them — but Shizuo was so painfully honest, and he was especially honest when he knew there were rules in place.

“Okay,” Shizuo breathed out easily, looking relieved that he didn’t have to elaborate any further. “Then, you’re obviously really fucking smart. I mean, your grades at school when you skipped ninety percent of classes? I always thought it was really unfair. Thought you were cheating for sure, but Shinra always said no. And now I know you probably didn’t. Look how no one has fucking killed you yet, despite how much you ruin people’s lives. I mean, I don’t really know how to measure intelligence, but you’d definitely be at the top of any—”

“Gotcha,” Izaya sang and prompted him to go on. “Next~!”

“Last one one is kinda hard to put into words…”

“I’m sure it is,” Izaya smirked. “Eloquence was never one of your strengths, Shizu-chan.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo snarled more out of habit than genuine anger, but continued. “Anyway, you make me worse.”

“How’s that a _good_ thing?” Izaya blinked. It was true, but the rules were clear that you had to answer the given question, not provide a random truth out of nowhere.

“I haven’t finished yet, geez,” Shizuo huffed impatiently. “You make me worse, but you also challenge me. So end result is I’m better overall. You make me lose it, but through the years it helped me deal with my anger. When you’re exposed to the same disease for years, you grow immune to it, I guess.”

“That’s not always how it works,” Izaya corrected automatically, mulling over what Shizuo said. It made more sense than Izaya was surprised to give it; just like Shizuo’s body grew stronger the more he exerted himself, Shizuo’s tolerance had been growing the more Izaya twisted him. About five years ago this conversation wouldn’t even be happening. Shizuo would have snapped the bars in half and charged him, and Izaya would actually be trapped in a cage with a beast that wouldn’t think twice about beating him to death. Izaya couldn’t bend metal to escape, after all.

The thought was a strange one for sure.

Shizuo grumbled thoughtfully as he continued. “You always push me to my limits, and therefore, you push them further back. When I’m not dealing with you, I have no trouble being calm now. That’s a good thing for me.”

“So you’re saying I make you better,” Izaya laughed out excitedly, masking his thought process. “Ha, ha! Shizu-chan, I can’t believe you said that. I’m never gonna let you live that down, you know?”

“Whatever,” Shizuo shrugged. “It’s the truth,” he added as if to defend himself. Then his face lit up as if a thought had struck him, and the following words stilled Izaya’s breath in his throat. “Also, you’re kind of really amazing, y'know? You can run from _me_. Hell, you can _fight_ me on equal footing. Considering how small you are, you really—”

“Dare,” Izaya prompted, more in an attempt to move on from the uncomfortable truths they had engaged in. “Don’t get carried away, Shizu-chan. I know I’m amazing, but no need to go on and on about it,” he smirked confidently, cocking his head to the side. “You’ve named three things already.”

Shizuo eyed him with a strange look, and to his mild surprise Izaya realized that they were sitting a lot closer to each other now. If he extended his hand out, he could touch Shizuo’s hair again.

“Let me kiss you again,” Shizuo said, and his hand rubbed the back of his neck as if he was nervous about the dare he was asking for.

“Are you out of your mind?” Izaya scoffed with a smile. “I’m never letting you near my lips again,” he said, running his tongue over the dip of the cut Shizuo left in the inner wall of his bottom lip. His mouth had been tasting metal for a while now.

Shizuo pressed his face closer to the bars, shifting his weight in a way where he was leaning forward. “ _Izaya_. Let me kiss you again,” he hissed, as if he wanted to yell it out but he didn’t want the guards to hear. Izaya scanned his intently joined brows and the shine of angry determination in the eyes. Shizuo didn’t look like he was going to be any gentler this time around.

Before his thoughts were fully formed, Izaya slid closer to the bars. When he got close enough, Shizuo reached through and grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him closer to himself. The inevitable loss of balance tipped Izaya forward, and his face hit the bars with a hard thump. He closed his eyes from the impact, smiling at the repeating scenario. Why he let Shizuo abuse him, he didn’t know. It was a perpetual cycle of hatred and twisted abuse, but they were both so deep into it, there didn’t seem to be an exit in sight.

“Stop,” he crinkled his nose as he pushed off the bars, but Shizuo didn’t let go. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

He was lying to himself, because even in the promise of more pain he wanted to be closer to Shizuo. That was why he moved forward before his mind even reached a decision. Shizuo was right there, and he was _demanding_ Izaya, and Izaya could never really bring himself to say no. The beast had come to his apartment so many times during the last six months, and not once did Izaya refuse him. Even when he was tired, or sleepy, or still heavily bruised from the last time they had sex. Even when he felt tempted to see what Shizuo would do if he was rejected.

He brought his face closer to Shizuo’s, bracing himself for another violent kiss. He felt the cold of the metal bars, but he also felt the warmth of Shizuo’s face. Their noses touched, and Shizuo stuck his tongue out, giving his nose an impatient lick. He seemed to be waiting for an “official” permission to dive in for the real kiss, but he wasn’t patient enough that he wouldn’t lick Izaya’s face. His fistful of Izaya’s shirt clenched tighter as he breathed in small huffs of air, eying Izaya with anticipation.

 _What an animal, honestly_ , Izaya laughed a little on the inside.

“Just one,” he finally said, tracing a finger over Shizuo’s dry, but healthy lips. They thinned under his touch — Shizuo was probably expecting a painful pinch instead of a gentle caress. _I should bite him back_ , Izaya thought petulantly, but he knew he would lose the battle of biting. The thought alone made him inwardly cringe from the possibilities of pain — Shizuo would probably lose his temper and not only would he maul down on him, he’d probably get angry enough to throw a punch if Izaya were to succeed.

With a short breath of quiet excitement, he leaned into Shizuo’s lips, renouncing control once again, and Shizuo shoved his tongue into his mouth, the same way he did the first time. It mirrored the violence of their first kiss, and Izaya suppressed the urge to wince from the rough contact, his mouth crying out in pain. Shizuo was _intense_. He cupped Izaya’s jaw to make sure he stayed in place, fingertips digging into the back of the bone. Izaya expected to hiss out in pain any moment now, but past the initial roughness, Shizuo slowly began kissing him softly, almost airily. His tongue was hesitant, delicate, and it was a timid kiss that was nothing like the original bite that they had shared. Gradually, Izaya relaxed into the kiss, ignoring the small tinges of pain that came when Shizuo ran his tongue over torn tissue.

His own fingers ran through Shizuo’s hair, closing down to grab a fistful, then letting go again. He traced the shape of the back of Shizuo’s head as he played with the entwisted locks. He wished there were no bars between them because it had gotten snug in his jeans.

Shizuo reeled back, his tongue grazing Izaya’s bottom lip with one last lick. With a soft snort, Izaya brushed his lips with his fingertips — they were still tingling with heat and pain. The pain he could ignore, but the labored breathing and the pleasure he derived from a simple kiss? That was a little more disturbing.

“So is this how Shizu-chan kisses women?”

Shizuo looked up at him, confused. His eyes were glassy, as if hazed by lust. “Huh?”

“Your kiss,” Izaya said pointedly, “was completely different from earlier. Don’t tell me you took pity on me and decided to pretend I’m someone else.”

As he said that, bitterness spilled through him because it was quite possible that Shizuo would do that. He probably felt guilty to hear Izaya slur words a little because of the bite.

“No,” Shizuo said, anger reestablishing in his eyes. “But I’ve never kissed a woman so I wouldn’t know,” he added gruffly and turned around to slump against the bars. Izaya scanned his hunched posture, noting the relative lack of fighting between them. Shizuo even opened his back towards him.

“Have you ever kissed anyone else?” Izaya asked, sitting down next to him. He could almost lean in to sit against Shizuo’s back, minus the bars.

“ _No._ ”

“Really,” Izaya hummed. “We’re pretty old, you know.”

When they first had sex, Shizuo was absolutely horrible but Izaya wrote it off as him being inexperienced with anal sex. He did relentlessly tease the other about being a virgin, but he didn’t actually believe it. He assumed Shizuo must have had a contact or two by now, considering how handsome he was.

“You think someone like me can have a relationship?” Shizuo scoffed. “I’m a wreck. I also wreck things. And then you’re in my life, too. There is no fucking way I’m subjecting anyone else to me.”

 _Ridiculous_ , Izaya thought. The only semblance of truth in the self-loathing nonsense Shizuo just spewed might be about Izaya’s presence in his life. Izaya didn’t know for sure what he would do if Shizuo was to stop his nightly visits, but he surmised he would get pretty vindictive. There was no hidden meaning or any particular reason for why he would set out to get revenge; he simply enjoyed the sex too much and didn’t want to let go of it. He didn’t want to set Shizuo free, either. Shizuo was his to take, to abuse, to play with.

The thoughts were giving him a headache, and he wanted to go back to kissing.

“Kiss me again, Shizu-chan,” he said, and Shizuo readily turned around.

The clock would soon strike midnight when they stopped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 hours down, 8 ish to go... holy insecure!Izaya in this fic. I'm not sure why he's coming out this way, but maybe it's someone's cup of tea?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is getting really fluffy, so OOC intensifies.

V

 

Shizuo had, from the very start, been a nuisance in Izaya’s life.

No matter the day or the place, if that beast had entered the periphery of Izaya’s vision, he would dominate it and claim all of his attention. Such distractions were vexing, and for years Izaya had tried to lead Shizuo into a place where the man would self-destruct himself. A seemingly easy task at first, it proved to be impossible. Shizuo’s spirit was just like his body; unbreakable and stubborn, and it seemed that his survival instincts were just as strong as they were in actual predators.

And that didn’t make any sense.

He showed so little regard for his health or others’ when he was unleashed, berserkers like him didn’t deserve to lead such a healthy life. A sun that explodes should become a dwarf; on the opposite, Shizuo continued shining just as bright, if not brighter, so intense that he burned the edges of Izaya’s pupils. Izaya couldn’t stare at him for too long for fear of going blind.

The searing kiss they shared reminded him of those thoughts, of Shizuo being much like a sun, because even though Shizuo was trying to be gentle, he was an animal first and foremost, and that meant he was exploding in his lust. His touch grew stronger, his tongue demanding control and power, and when Izaya pulled away with a soft whimper, he was surprised to hear that sound from himself. His lips felt as if they were on fire, but the sound of weakness that slipped past his guard wasn’t because of pain.

“Say truth again,” Shizuo said as he shoved away, oblivious to Izaya’s inner thoughts. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

Izaya’s laugh was more a snort. “Shizu-chan, you can’t tell me what to call. That’s not how the game is played.”

His chest would heave if he wasn’t levelling his breath in an attempt to look unfazed, even if it meant that he had to feel a stifling deficit of oxygen in his lungs. Kissing was too much of a disturbance, he concluded, and now that they had tried a great deal of it, he wasn’t eager to do it again. They did right to avoid it during sex.

“I don’t care,” Shizuo shrugged. “Say truth, or the game’s over.”

 _Definitely not a bluff_ , Izaya thought as he analyzed the painful simplicity in front of him. Shizuo was too straightforward to play coy. The question was, did Izaya himself care enough to continue the game? He thought about going back to his book and ignoring Shizuo for the rest of the night, but that seemed so much more boring.

After all, Shizuo was _his_ sun. Burning everything in his reach, to the point of melting. If playing with fire was considered risky, what was playing with the sun like? That was the kind of challenge that Izaya could never resist. The very first day they had met, he was stunned into silence by the display of destruction in front of him. Shizuo’s fire was all-encompassing, unending, unyielding to the laws of physics, and Izaya _had_ to play with him. That he claimed all of Shizuo’s attention so easily was something that he couldn’t predict, but he was happy things unfolded the way they did.

Because of that, Shizuo was _his_ sun and his only, and he burned Izaya’s wings when Izaya tried to fly too high. He would fall, just like Icarus did, only to get up right after and try again. Blood, bruises and knives, a mix of lust and violence, it all was a wild mess. Shizuo didn’t realize it, but Izaya was probably on the losing side of things. Words and his understanding of human nature were his strongest weapons, but those were powerless against Shizuo’s black-and-white world where he could intuit what was right and what was wrong.

Of course, a realization like that only challenged Izaya more, and he kept trying to fly.

“Fine,” he said, finding himself unable to back down. “Truth, for those who insist,” he tipped his head coquettishly, as if he was courting Shizuo. He wanted to believe that he was humoring Shizuo, but deep inside a fear was trapped in his chest that Shizuo’s power over him was winning out all other options. He swatted those thoughts away, focusing on the blinding sun in front of him.

“Why frame me?” Shizuo’s grating voice accompanied the metal screech of bars curving underneath his tightened fists. “Don’t give me bullshit about wanting to see me suffer or whatever. Gimme the truth!”

“That _was_ the truth,” Izaya said, a little irked by the lack of faith. Why did people refuse to believe in his petty motives? He had done so much more for far lesser reasons. “I thought it would be funny, that I’d get to laugh at you as you drown in your guilt. Come on, does that really not sound like me?”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you laugh at all that?”

“You don’t get a second question, Shizu-chan,” Izaya smiled. “Your turn.”

“Fuck the game,” Shizuo spat. “ _Talk_ , Izaya. I’ve been holding off on messing you up for that because of this whole jail thing, but the more I think about it, the more I realize how lenient I’ve been with you. So talk, before I break these bars and _make_ you talk.”

“So scary,” Izaya mock cowered, but Shizuo had already pulled a few bars apart, creating a warped circle, and Izaya shot a quick glance down the darkness of the corridor. He could call the guards, but he didn’t really want to. In a slow, non-threatening motion, he placed a hand over Shizuo’s fist that was bending the bars. “I can talk,” he whispered softly, leaning in. “Why don’t you answer a question of mine first?”

“What?” Shizuo narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

“Don’t you think things have gotten a little weird?”

“What things?”

“You fuck me, you kiss me for almost half an hour… even though we hate each other.”

Shizuo stared at the small hand covering his fist. The difference in size was glaring, skinny fingers delicately wrapped around a big tense fist with an angry vein popping from the flow of blood. There was one thing that Izaya could always use against Shizuo: his hatred of violence. Once he was given a peaceful gesture, he would not attack. He paused the assault on the metal, a thoughtful look blanketing his face. It calmed his features, though he looked no less intense than before.

“When we first started,” he frowned deeper as he started talking. “When we did it the first time, we agreed it was to burn off steam. No games, no strings, all that stuff. _You_ did most of the talking, you know this!” he exclaimed impatiently, confusion washing over his eyes. In the dark of the cell, their color almost looked black, but they shone just as bright as during daylight.

“Yet you shifted in attitude, didn’t you?” Izaya asked, sliding his thumb over Shizuo’s wrist. The skin was surprisingly soft to the touch. He rarely touched the beast during their acts, for Shizuo rarely touched him. “We said nothing else would change, but you did. Your chasing has been half-hearted. You think I wouldn’t notice? And you didn’t believe I had something to do with the incident.”

Shizuo finally slapped away his hand, waking up from his thoughts. “Well, some of us aren’t as soulless as you. I thought you’d be less of a dick.”

“Why would you think that,” Izaya laughed. “I hate you, Shizu-chan.”

“Then why let me in every night, huh? It doesn’t make any fucking sense!” Shizuo snapped, raising his voice.

Izaya pressed a finger to his lips, and Shizuo flinched, trying to catch it between his teeth.

“Shhh, Shizu-chan. The guards will hear you.”

“Fuck you.” He finally caught Izaya’s dancing finger and bit down, forcing an excited squeak out of him. The tip of his pointing finger was being mauled on, but he took the abuse with a smile. “You’re fucking crazy,” Shizuo said, when he spat the finger out. Izaya licked the burning end, trying to soothe it.

“Animal,” he said with a pout, knowing that he was pulling off a great hurt look.

“Tch.” Shizuo’s nose creased in disgust, then he half-leaped forward until their foreheads almost banged. “How’d you know the old woman was gonna kill herself?”

“She told me,” Izaya shrugged, putting distance between them again. “Nothing special or interesting.”

“You talk to old ladies often?” Shizuo arched an eyebrow, skeptical. “How’d you meet her?”

“Stopped by her bench because she looked like she was gonna die any moment,” Izaya said, recalling the day. “I was fascinated by her crippling age. Was kinda hoping she would kick it right there and then but no such luck…” his voice trailed off as he reminisced.

“Fucking psycho,” Shizuo shook his head in judgment. “So what then? You just introduced herself?”

“Yeah, I’m friendly like that, Shizu-chan. People like me, you know?”

“Only strangers do,” Shizuo smirked. “Once they get to know who you really are, they’re gone in an eyeblink. No one wants to deal with you, flea.”

Izaya didn’t grace that with a response. He still held his abused finger to his lips, thinking about the day he met the old woman. She knew who he was; he announced his thoughts right away. She didn’t run from him. An anomaly in so many ways.

“You fucking changed, too.” Shizuo’s voice cut through his thought process.

“Oh?”

“Don’t _oh_ me,” Shizuo said. “I can feel it. I could sense you were kinda off recently. I thought maybe you were getting bored of the—” he coughed, eyes falling to the floor as he uttered, “the _sex_.”

Ah, _that_ was why Shizuo blew him on that night. Izaya did wonder where that came from, when the beast had always only received and never given him much in return. For the first few months he didn’t even care if Izaya got to finish, just taking his pleasure and stalking off afterwards. The fucks were rough, but Shizuo softened with time. When his calloused hands first wrapped around Izaya’s arousal, the shock of the touch almost made him come on the spot. He didn’t expect it to feel so good. Such unpredictable turns of events were bound to have their effect, or so Izaya wanted to think every time he thought back on the way he would always come so hard, spilling over Shizuo’s fingers.

He was thirteen when he first played with himself to the thought of having sex with a girl. Weighing out the pros and cons, he decided to put the urge aside after, for it felt far too human to involve himself with it. He couldn’t imagine giving that much of himself to another human being; why would he? Certain Gods in many mythologies were known to frivolously engage in carnal pleasures with humans, but those Gods were written by humans themselves. Izaya didn’t seriously believe in any given God, and his own self-proclaimed title was just that — a state of mind, a lifestyle. Separating himself from the realm of humans, watching over them from afar… Serious interpersonal relationships simply didn’t fit in that schematic. Casual sex was of no interest to him, because he knew very well that the line blurred too often. He used to know that in theory, and now he was beginning to suspect he was understanding it in practice.

Those kinds of desires were put to sleep, and they remained dormant, until the day he met Heiwajima Shizuo whom he conveniently classified as a “monster.” He was nearing sixteen then, and he started touching himself again, to the thought of that monster. Their games of chase had always been about control to him, about assertion of his superiority, because deep inside he suspected that Shizuo reigned over him. It irritated him to no end, and he’d rejoice to see Shizuo lose it, to see Shizuo fall apart… all was in great fun and entertainment.

Until he started this particular game, the kind of game that he never thought someone like Shizuo would agree to, and his body was overrun with all kinds of itches, and he was still looking for the right solution. It was a little unsettling sometimes, just how perceptive this monster was. He sensed Izaya’s invisible discomfort perhaps even quicker than Izaya himself did.

“I don’t have any complaints on that front,” Izaya said with a blissful smile, his voice ringing with the rare air of sincerity.

“What is it then?” Shizuo shot another question into the dark, as if he would get an answer. “Something’s been off, Izaya. Tell me. Call truth, pretend it’s another game, but _tell me_.”

“What do you care, Shizu-chan?” Izaya asked, shaking his head a little. Shizuo’s headstrong attack was gaining momentum; he looked like a volcano about to erupt with a million questions in the stead of molten lava. It seemed as though Shizuo had been hoarding an itch of his own, judging by the uncertainty that rang in the air.

“’Cause I’m fucking tired of it!”

“Tired of what?” Izaya asked, careful not to interrupt the stream of honesty. Honesty was a rare animal between the two of them, a shy fawn that bolted away at the slightest creak of a branch.

He didn’t need to be so cautious.

The volcano erupted, the sun was out of the clouds, and it was all spilling on top of him, engulfing him in a wave of heat with every uttered word.

“Tired of walking back every night, wondering what the fuck had happened,” Shizuo muttered, no sense of rhythm in his speech. “Every goddamn time I take the elevator down, walk to the bus stop and look up at your apartment from way the fuck down and see that shitty little window of your bedroom. The light’s usually on, and I _know_ you’re there. I know I was inside of you. I know you can still feel me. I know you don’t have anyone else. But why the fuck does it _happen_? Every time I tell myself it was the last time, and I know that’s a fuckin’ lie. Things _have_ gotten weird. I’m not good at this whole pretend shit,” Shizuo finished with a grunt, as if he was in pain. He turned around to sit against the metal bars halfway through his speech, in his best effort to conceal his own face. Izaya caught a glimpse of wild uncertainty before all he could see was the back of Shizuo’s head.

It took a few moments for the meaning of his words to register in Izaya’s mind. He leaned his shoulder against the cold iron, staring at the slope of Shizuo’s hunched back. It was good that Shizuo was looking away; he’d probably gawp at the way Izaya’s face lost all manner of smiles after that long speech he just spilled on him.

“You’re making no sense, Shizu-chan,” he said softly before the silence lasted long enough for it to be suspicious. “I’ve never forced you out. You leave on your own accord.”

“Of course I’m gonna fucking leave,” Shizuo scoffed. “Why would I stay after?”

“Yeah, why would you?” Izaya echoed mockingly. “See, you’re making no sense. You complain about _being tired_ when all you do after we have sex is storm out, like you’ve done something disgusting.”

“It _is_ disgusting,” Shizuo slurred in a mumble, but he sounded unconvinced. His fingers flexed, bunching in a fist, then untwining. “Fuck, I wish I could have a smoke right now.”

“I’m sure you do,” Izaya said, and it was harder to mask his disdain right there. He didn’t intend to sound bitter. “You wish you could smoke your stupid cigarette, then leave immediately.”

“Huh?” the turn of Shizuo’s head was so sharp, it almost looked dangerous for the neck that snapped sideways.

Izaya said nothing, acutely aware that that had been a misstep. Without further information, nothing could be gleaned from that bit of truth he’d let slip, so he kept his mouth curved in a smile, _shut_.

“What was that, Izaya?”

“Hmm?” he feigned ignorance as he raised himself from the floor. “I’m not sure, Shizu-chan.”

“You hate cigarettes, I guess,” Shizuo said hesitantly, his voice losing enthusiasm. “You once tried to get me to quit for whatever reason. Not like you care about my health.”

“It’s not about the fucking cigarettes,” Izaya said with a needle of irritation. Shizuo was incredibly dense.

“I don’t get it then. What the fuck is wrong with you? Is it something that I do?”

“It’s _everything_ you do, you filthy beast,” Izaya hissed, his patience finally dipping for a split second to let his voice ring so sharply. Why was Shizuo so goddamn stupid?

Silence struck down on them like lightning, and they stared at each other, entangled in an unfortunate web where neither was the spider or the fly. Shizuo’s knee was driven into Izaya’s, and the huff of his breathing tickled Izaya’s skin, his face. He felt the temptation to lean a centimeter closer for yet another rough kiss, but he was done with those.

“You hate it,” Shizuo said slowly, his dark brown eyes lighting up with realization. “You hate it just as much as I do.”

Izaya nodded, grateful that at least that much was established.

“Why continue then?” Shizuo asked, simple as always. His question made too much sense, yet it had never been an option.

“Neither of us has much of a choice, don’t you think?” Izaya said, shrugging a little. “Think about it, Shizu-chan. We fought the moment we laid eyes on each other. We fought for years after. Do you really think I enjoy being sniffed out by you? That I like you messing with my work? If I could get rid of you, I would. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be an option. I could ask you the same question. Why continue chasing me? Why keep coming back?”

“Yeah, well, fighting is one thing… why'd we add the other?” Shizuo’s mumble was so quiet, Izaya barely made out the content of his question.

“It doesn’t feel too much different,” said Izaya.

It was Shizuo’s turn to nod, because he seemed to understand what Izaya meant. He blinked, a sharp underline under his eyes from how narrowed they were, then abruptly got up and walked over to his bed. Izaya’s heart felt hot from the sudden shift in the air, a prickle of irritation running through his mind. Of course, Shizuo would be the first to get up. He seemed to get rid of Izaya’s influence faster.

He wanted to find some sharp words to throw at the retreating back, but his thoughts ran like a slow stream of porridge, thick and muddy. Silently, he got up from the steel floor and headed to his own metal excuse of a bed.

 

 

!

 

 

“We could change some things.”

The loudness of Shizuo’s voice startled him. From his bed, he observed Shizuo jumping off his own bed and plopping down on the floor with all the grace of a behemoth.

They had been silent for the last two hours or so. He had attempted to get some sleep, but sleep was missing from his eye blinks, and he could only stare at the colorless wall in front of him, struggling to create a pattern in the cracks that ran through the old chipping paint. His brain refused to come up with anything interesting, his thoughts straying back to the one thing he wanted to avoid thinking about.

— _Shizuo_ , and Shizuo was just as sleepless, it seemed, from the energy that his voice carried when he yelled out his ridiculous idea about change.

“Change?” Izaya heard himself echo. Once again, Shizuo dictated the flow, and he was going along with it; he hated himself for it. “People don’t change, Shizu-chan.”

“Sure they do.”

Shizuo watched him intently, as Izaya slipped from the metallic frame and sat back down at the same old spot on the floor next to the warped bars. He was quite a fair amount of distance away from Shizuo’s new place, and Shizuo scoffed, sidling sideways to sit in front of him again.

“No, they don’t," Izaya insisted. "They may change in times of great distress, and not often for the best,” he smiled, confident in his understanding of human nature. “Death of a family member, divorce, getting fired from a job where they’d worked their whole life… and more extreme situations like war and torture, but that doesn’t really happen as often anymore. _Within_ their comfort zone, people do not change.”

“Fuck that,” Shizuo shrugged off his analysis like it was drivel. “We’re not normal people, you and me. We’re fucked up, and we usually do whatever the fuck we want. That much we have in common. You agree?”

Izaya blinked. The contrarian in him wanted to disagree, and the mere thought of agreeing with Heiwajima Shizuo was strange at best, sickening at worst, but what Shizuo spoke was undeniably true.

Shizuo took his hesitation as agreement. “That means we can change if we want to,” he declared, holding his chin up high. There was defiance in his eyes, the orange glint of the dim light from down the corridor reflecting in them.

“Suppose that’s true,” Izaya decided he would humor him. “How do you imagine we would change?”

“You never told me what exactly bothered you, so I can’t speak for you… but I know _I’m_ tired of this shit. So I was thinking we should maybe adjust a little?” he asked, confidence surging out of him with every word. Now that he was supposed to talk specifics, he seemed a lot less sure. “Like you said,” he hurried to add, leaning in, “we don’t have a choice, yeah? So let’s make the best of this!”

“This?” Izaya laughed. “What is _this_ that you’re talking about?”

“Our sexual relationship!”

If Izaya was drinking, he would spit out his drink at the candid label Shizuo assigned to their fucks. Instead, he snorted air out of his nose, looking at him condescendingly. “I thought it was disgusting for you, Shizu-chan. What would you like to change about it?”

“I said it was disgusting ‘cause it feels wrong to just do it like that, like we've been doing. When it's over, I always feel like I’ve used you or something. I mean, it did start that way, of course. I didn’t really _feel_ much at start, aside from how good it was to... you know...” Shizuo looked up at him, his stiff hand waving a vague gesture.

Izaya reminisced on their first clandestine meetings, a wild mess of fucks that threatened to turn into fights halfway through and penetration that bordered on painful rather than pleasurable. They had calmed down since, having made peace with the fact that both of them would benefit from it.

He opened his mouth to tease Shizuo on the ridiculous notion he had about Izaya’s own thoughts on the matter. He wanted to say that he was happy with the arrangements, but under Shizuo’s hawkish stare he couldn’t really allow himself to sing those kinds of lies. Shizuo saw right through him, and Izaya wasn’t fond of being called out on his bullshit. He wanted to be a step ahead, and so he did the unpredictable: he admitted the capital T truth that was the reason both of them ended up locked up for the night.

“I don’t appreciate you leaving immediately after. I want you to stay the night sometimes.”

He analyzed the even white lines of his nails, then looked up to flash Shizuo a teasing smile. It was innocent and playful, his smirk, and either the words or the smile, or both, seemed to widen Shizuo’s eyes into an expression Izaya had rarely seen on him.

“I don’t exactly like it either,” Shizuo stammered after a pregnant pause that was uncomfortable only for him. Izaya didn’t feel any pressure anymore. He was the one leading now, and even though he was blind, it didn’t matter where they ended up as long as he was ahead of Shizuo. “But what the hell would I stay for... It’s you and me. I don’t feel like fighting after.”

“Yeah, you do always give it your all,” Izaya chuckled, reminded of how languid and lax Shizuo was post-coitus. It was as certain as clockwork, that he had no energy left right after. Perhaps that was the best time to kill him, really.

“And that’s why I smoke the cigarettes that you hate so much,” Shizuo continued mumbling, running a hand through his wayward locks. “I figure I can at least stay for that long.”

A strange sensation unfurled in his stomach. It was tugging, sucking in, pulling at something. Izaya slowly realized it to be the side effect of Shizuo’s words; the confession that Shizuo did want to stay. He swallowed, careful not to let it be apparent. “You can stay the night, Shizu-chan. You’re a good source of heat; useful at least for that.”

“No fighting?” Shizuo asked, narrowing his eyes in disbelief. “No stabbing me in the middle of the night?”

“No fighting, no talking, nothing. Just sleep.”

“I mean, talking’s fine…”

“Oh yeah? What happened to keeping it to a minimum? You bit my head off for talking about finances.”

“Tch,” Shizuo frowned. “’Cause you’re annoying, and your words always rile me up!”

“You’re not _particularly_ riled up right now,” Izaya pointed out.

“That's what I've been saying. Things are weird now,” Shizuo said defensively.

 _They sure are_. Uncertainty wrapped around him like a blanket, and Izaya wasn’t so sure anymore, that he didn’t care where they both ended up if it meant that he was ahead. The conversation was headed in a strange direction, and there were fleeting expressions on Shizuo’s face that were previously unavailable to him… He had seen glimpses of them before. They were usually reserved for the likes of Vorona or little Akane and instantly erased whenever Shizuo’s gaze fell on Izaya. Now he could see the ghost of that quiet thoughtfulness in Shizuo’s features, but what did that really mean?

Shizuo was oblivious to his internal musings. He was painfully primitive; the short moment of mental intimacy seemed to have incited him, and he tipped his head forward, clicking his forehead against Izaya’s. His resolve against kissing nowhere to be found, Izaya readily slipped his tongue between Shizuo’s lips, feeling elevated like he was high on drugs. The buzzing in his head would not stop, and he had no idea what to do with his hands, so he rested them on Shizuo's shoulders. Shizuo was less hesitant; he was a natural at it, really. His hands roamed inside Izaya's jacket, slipped past his shirt, brushed the softness of his stomach and then skidded down to palm between his legs.

“Fuck.” Izaya pulled away, covering Shizuo’s mouth with his hand and pushing him off. “Not here, Shizu-chan. Let’s talk, hmm?”

“Talk?” Shizuo’s hazed eyes blinked. He swatted Izaya’s hand and licked his lips. “What the hell?”

“Shizu-chan’s always so horny,” Izaya said, pretending to lament that fact. “I'd like to _talk_ , actually; call it boredom, but we can’t have sex through the bars, and let’s say I’m not exactly fond of public indecency.”

“I’m normal amount of horny,” Shizuo said, almost petulant, but sat back down in defeat. It was a complete lie; Shizuo’s libido was off the charts, but that was expected of the animal that he was. “Talking’s fucking hard.”

“Yeah,” Izaya nodded, his eyes skittering to the clock by ingrained habit. “But we don’t back down from challenges, do we? We have that much in common,” he mocked Shizuo’s choice of words from earlier, delighted at the cringe that ran through Shizuo’s face at the reminder.

_4:20 AM._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry for the lack of updates here and in the other fic, I've hit a huge insecurity low when it comes to writing and am grateful to _indridason_ for pulling me out of it... even though I'm no good yet, I will continue working on it to become better!)
> 
> Reminder: please remember that there's going to be a lot of dialogue in this fic... so reading through all of it might be tedious for some. There won't be any more real sex from here on, actually, just more talks, fluff, angst and fluff again. I just don't want to disappoint readers by misleading with the rating and tags. I'm pretty clueless about people's expectations and I wanted to make this clear. I only really post in small hopes that someone would enjoy seeing the two of these in some certain light that I've chosen!


	6. Chapter 6

VI

 

“You’re not meant to be domesticated, Shizu-chan.”

His murmurs were off-key, with an unintended change of pitch halfway through the sentence, the words reverberating somewhere between Shizuo’s vertebrae. His cold nose was buried against Shizuo’s back, who was leaning back against the bars, the posture almost criminally content in how relaxed it was around someone like Izaya.

 _Someone like me_ , Izaya’s mind clung to the line, and he chose to speak out loud. “Who am I, anyway? I am a lot of things, I control a lot of things. See these hands, Shizu-chan? They’re not like yours. We wield very different instances of power in this world.”

He stretched them outward, weaving them through the bars, snaking under and past Shizuo’s underarms to end up in front of Shizuo’s chest. It was an embrace, one could call it, and Izaya was now sitting in _seiza_ to accommodate his impromptu hug from behind, his knees hitting the metal between them.

“Shitty hands,” came the low grumble of a response. “Shitty, but pretty.” The small hands were grabbed by another set of hands, rough palms trapping Izaya’s fingers with force just barely below the crushing level. Of course, Izaya didn’t even wince, only smiling against the cheap fabric in front of his face.

By then, they had talked for about an hour, though it was hardly an evenly distributed conversation. Izaya was doing the heavy lifting, while Shizuo was a taciturn ocean of either boredom or indifference, unwilling to support any thread of a remotely meaningful conversation. Of course, Izaya wasn’t making it easy — he knowingly broached subjects that were far beyond Shizuo’s scope of knowledge, just to see that creak of frustration that ran through Shizuo’s forehead every time the man heard a word he didn’t even know the meaning of.

Izaya never hid his triumph over the beast. In a way, he admitted to himself, that was a distorted form of honesty. A rare sight from _someone like him_ , because with anyone else on the entire planet he almost certainly reflected emotions that weren’t the most immediate. A trifling victory over a kid that wanted to play the games of gang warfare, a calculated move against the district’s most feared drug kingpin, or a visit to the level-headed representative of a yakuza group — in those moments Izaya’s messages were always deliberate, and when Izaya interacted with them, he delivered performances that he deemed worthy of his respective audience. He slipped up here and there, in moments he was most excited, but with Shizuo, it was an entirely different story.

What was the point of a performance in front of someone who would never appreciate the art? No matter what he tried to sell in the past, Shizuo was, in the simplest of terms, not a buyer. An annoyance, an itch under his skin, a human forever out of his reach. To brand him an animal in order to maintain some form of plausible deniability, to soothe the bruises of his ego from the pesky realization that Shizuo was unreachable in that regard.

“I don’t like the ego, you know?”

The man who was supposedly unreachable rested comfortably between his arms, save for the iron that separated them.

“I read about this when I was young—no, when I was a child. I am still young, of course. Freud’s concept of the ego, Jung’s idea of a shadow self. An unconscious part of you that the ego does not see in itself. The less you acknowledge it, the denser it is. The less you self-reflect, the more of an animal you are. The less you think about it, the darker your mind.”

“Is that a fancy way to call me an animal again?” Shizuo scoffed. “You’ve said it enough, Izaya. I get it, alright?”

“No, no, this is about me, I think,” Izaya chirped reassurance. “Didn’t we say we’d talk?”

“I didn’t know what I was signing up for. You sure _love_ to talk.”

The words were supposed to carry annoyance, but Shizuo was probably too tired to give them their full meaning. Either way, Izaya wasn’t stopping.

“Ever since I read that, I knew that I would shed light on the deepest corners of myself. I wanted to be in control of every little bit of myself.”

“You complicate things too much. Just do things that feel right. That should be what everyone does.”

“I don’t live by _feel_ ,” Izaya rolled his eyes theatrically even though Shizuo couldn’t see his face. He was still holding Izaya’s hands hostage, his grip awkward and uncomfortable, as if the man didn’t know what to do with what he trapped. A new type of prey? Who _was_ the predator between them? “ _Feeling_ is for the likes of you, Shizu-chan. Even if I could fully understand things by just feeling, I would be a fool to believe there is right and wrong in this world.”

“Bullshit.”

“Justice is a social construct. Even the Greeks knew that much. Humans need the idea of good and bad to cooperate with each other. If it furthers the needs of the group, it’s good. If it’s against it, it’s bad. Quite simple to understand, yeah?”

“Stop babbling. You just use this shit to justify your shenanigans.”

Shizuo threw Izaya’s hands away in a quick, rough motion, and turned around. _Rejected once again_ , Izaya thought to himself with a mental chuckle, as he retrieved his aching hands.

“I don’t need to justify anything.”

Their gaze locked, a different kind of tension growing between them. It had always been brawn against brain, but in recent memory Shizuo had been exceptional with his self-control.

“ _What_?” Izaya asked, making sure mirth danced underneath his lowered eyelashes. It was his taunting mask, an old expression that was sure to rile Shizuo into chasing him for many blocks.

“The world really does make sense in your head, doesn’t it?” Shizuo asked. No air of hostility, just a plain straightforward look. A look of an _idiot_ that dares to think he understands something, Izaya thought with irritation, but quickly dispelled the dust of unnecessary emotion.

“I may have changed my mind on talking,” he said coolly, maintaining his smile. “We almost don’t speak the same language, you know?”

There was no point in elaborating, because Shizuo would only strengthen his stupid ideas that he somehow understood someone like Izaya.

Minutes of silence passed, the strain of the staring spell they were under taking its toll on Izaya. He wasn’t going to back down, but it was so maddening to analyze those clear eyes. He much preferred the old Shizuo, the truly uncontrollable beast who was easier to understand in his braindead violence. He was never intimidated by strength, but the calm side of a lion was somehow more unsettling, because it was harder to guess what the animal was up to. Fear of the unknown, of course, Izaya quickly identified the source of his uneasiness; what is he supposed to do with a monster that doesn’t act like one?

“Everyone’s world makes sense,” he finally said, shattering the fragile silence, “why would I be the exception? I would lose my mind if I didn’t have a working plane of reality, and lunatics don’t exactly last.”

“You care about surviving then?” Shizuo hummed, fishing out the most unexpected bit out of what Izaya managed to say.

“Oh, I intend to live forever, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo chortled with laughter, the sound low and warm. It came out of nowhere — startling Izaya into muteness, raising the little hairs on the back of his neck. He shifted on the floor, suddenly realizing how cold it was in their cells.

“You don’t believe me then,” he said, and when he smiled again, it was almost involuntary. Laughter was terribly contagious, after all, like yawning.

“We all die, Izaya-kun,” Shizuo said amiably, as if he was careful not to hurt Izaya’s imaginary feelings. “There is no living forever.”

“Well, I can die trying then,” Izaya joked, and then it struck him, the realization that he was wrong all along, the thought alone chilling him.

It wasn’t the look of an idiot, no matter how much he’d have liked to attribute that to someone like Shizuo. It was a child’s innocence that annoyed him so much. Uncorrupted and pure, the only difference being Shizuo’s ingrained sense of good and bad. Children didn’t possess such notions, but Shizuo did, and he managed to maintain his innocence way into his adult years.

It wasn’t his fault that Izaya had missed it; Shizuo was destruction personified, his rage fits being one of his defining characteristics. Add incessant swearing, dry humor and the fact that he apparently got off to fucking someone like Izaya… no one in their right mind would call the Beast of Ikebukuro _innocent_.

And yet that was exactly why Izaya was annoyed; he had failed to see it for so long. He liked to fancy himself to be _oh so perceptive_ , and yet again, he missed such obvious cues when it came to Heiwajima Shizuo.

“I like this strained look on you,” Shizuo said. “Like you’re trying really hard to sneak a fart or something.”

Izaya creased his nose in disgust, the comparison appalling him. “What a brute thing to say,” he said, almost doubting his epiphany of Shizuo’s innocence.

“What was that about domesticating me, anyway?” Shizuo suddenly asked.

“Hmm?”

“You said that earlier. I’m not meant to be domesticated,” Shizuo repeated the words with hesitance. “The fuck is that supposed to mean? I’m a person, not a pet.”

“Ah,” Izaya remembered. “Nothing, really, I was just _babbling_.”

“You’ve been doing this on purpose,” Shizuo declared, pulling away. Izaya remained in _seiza_ , keenly watching Shizuo get up and walk anxiously around his cell, with all the impatience of a caged animal that struggled to behave. “Going on about some weird shit, talking about things you _know_ I’m not read up on. Cheap ass tricks, if you ask me. You just want to prove something to yourself, and you’re doing a great job at it. I mean, you always get what you want, right? I don’t know what I expected,” he shook his head violently, as if he was shaking off strange thoughts he didn’t want invading his mind. “I really don’t have any idea what the fuck I was expecting.”

Izaya hummed in thought, realizing that Shizuo was correct, _again_. His knees started to ache, as he was unaccustomed to sitting in that position for longer than half of an hour. He remained frozen all the same, both in thought and body, and it was a while before he decided to speak again.

There were different kinds of prisons in life. Most people didn’t even realize it, but they were defined by the environment surrounding them, and the choices they had made in life. Snared by desires for power, money, attention and approval, humans liked to pretend they were free when the simplest things dictated their lives. The two of them were different from most, but not that different. That night, Shizuo was trapped quite literally — he would have bent the bars and stormed out, if it wasn’t for his dutiful respect for the laws of their country. He abided by them, because he believed that was what a good person would do. On the contrary, Izaya’s prison was entirely figurative — he was a free man, only a phonecall away from stepping out of the dimly lit steel of the room, but he chose to confine himself because he had felt cornered by his own thoughts that had been so irritatingly erratic. Even if he sleazed his way out of the literal prison, he would feel exactly the same outside.

All of this Izaya realized — and it was the most bitter pill to swallow for him — when Shizuo saw right through him yet _again_ , and the hot feeling of embarrassment flooded over him, warming his blood and flushing his cheeks. He had tried his best to be unpredictable and unreadable, but it was a lost battle against someone like Heiwajima Shizuo.

And there they were, with Shizuo shaking his head in something that looked like angry disappointment, and Izaya coming to terms with the fact that he would never surprise Shizuo unless he broke all the rules and went against his own essence.

Anything he had felt inclined to do, he had to scratch and search for the one thing that either appalled or bored him.

“You were right,” Izaya spoke up, raising his head to look up at the blond man in the farthest corner of the neighboring cell. Shizuo was slouched, eyes half-shut, almost sleepy. It had to have been a good hour that Izaya spent in silence, and the hands of the clock were ticking past six in the morning. “I _was_ trying to filibuster you.”

“Filibuster?”

“I was stalling,” Izaya went for a simpler word, inwardly laughing at Shizuo’s pathetic vocabulary. “I didn’t really want to talk in a way that you would understand.”

“Why?” Shizuo asked simply. He straightened his back, moving his legs and dropping his feet on the floor.

Ah, the pain of doing things you abhorred. Izaya lightly swallowed, his mind full of loud warnings, his ego twisting uncomfortably. The alarm bells were ringing, almost deafening him in a cell that was already quiet. “Because it’d lead somewhere previously unexplored,” he managed to say, at last. The words came out ineloquent, and he mentally cursed himself for failing to at least express himself with his usual elegance. “It would birth a conversation where both of us are equal. That’s rather wild, don’t you think?”

“But you _want_ that, right?”

Another knife through his mind, and yet another blow to his ego. Considering that he was dissatisfied with all the options they had had so far… the truth was there, locked away in a faraway cell of his mind that he didn’t want to ever access. Yet he sneaked glimpses at it before, short and innocent, he thought, when he joked with the old woman, carelessly dancing around the truth that Shizuo was a human. The most human human.

“Yeah,” he canted his head, smiling like a masochist from the pain he was inducing in himself. The contradictions rang so loudly in his head, he was getting an actual migraine. “Yeah, Shizu-chan, I do want that.”

“You’re weird right now,” was all Shizuo said to that, as he approached the bars again, that same stupid clarity shining in the brown eyes.

The world must have been so simple for Shizu-chan.

The excitement of innocence, so damningly easy to fall in love with. Izaya’s skin crawled with anticipation when Shizuo reached out, rough palm brushing past his neck. It was a hold, fingers closing around the back of his neck, but before Izaya could muster enough protest, his nose bumped into the cold iron from the force that pulled him forward, and there was a kiss, sloppy and hungry.

The migraine was blooming, blurred images of a heavy hammer manifesting inside his skull. They kissed, and he felt nauseous from the euphoria, nauseous from the dissonance, nauseous from the loud protests of his inner self. If it had gone any longer, he would surely vomit, so he pulled away, but not before he bit down on Shizuo’s lips, a childish attempt to make the other feel at least some sort of pain.

“No more?” Shizuo wiped his lips, not even bothering to hide his greed. “Was still good.”

 _At least the beast is oblivious to this_ , Izaya thought with a small dose of satisfaction. He wanted to lie down on the cold floor and let the waves of the migraine subside, but he hadn’t fallen apart enough to let that much through. He sat still, visibly unconcerned, as the hammer chipped away at the back of his skull.

“Let’s confess,” he said, his voice cracking and fraying despite his best efforts. If he was to go down, he was going down in flames. He doubted Shizuo had anything terrible to reveal, but he was ready to crush Shizuo’s newfound hopes. “You want honesty, right?”

“Well, yeah, that would be ideal. But confess to what?” Shizuo asked, confused. Caution flared in his eyes again, as he squinted. “You playing games again?”

“No games. I thought you wanted to know me. You know, the real me. The unabridged edition,” Izaya laughed.

“That would be good, but…”

“What is the worst thing you have done?”

Shizuo fell pensive, his lips thinning from thought. “Don’t overwork yourself,” Izaya rushed him. “Just the first thing that comes to mind.”

“I hurt a woman I meant to protect,” Shizuo said. There was no emotion in his voice, like he was stating a fact about the universe. “What about you?” he asked, then rubbed at his eyes. “Wait, I don’t want to know. You’ve done some really bad shit.”

“Oh, you might want to hear this. I knew a girl that would do anything I told her to do. In me she saw a full-fledged god, and in her small little world my words were absolute. I was aware of this; it was what made interacting with her fun for a while. Once I grew bored with her, I told her to let herself be captured by a gang of very sketchy men. I explained to her all the risks, and she still did it, isn’t that just so curious? The ending was quite banal, unfortunately — an attempted rape and a pair of broken legs. Nothing too surprising…”

Izaya stared intently into Shizuo’s eyes, hoping to capture the exact moment hope disappeared within the man.

There was pain, a whole lot of it, actually. It brought Izaya back to life, the look of a pained animal reminding him of what he truly appreciated in life. He fed off the sight like a vulture, rejuvenating himself from the power he had gained over Shizuo. _Anyone_ could be controlled; he just had to find the right tools. Sure, he had to slip a little before Shizuo would trust him enough to leave himself vulnerable, but in the end he emerged as a victor. The end justified the means, and it wasn’t like he went that far, right?

He was feeling true ecstasy, the dull migraine slowly dissipating. This was what he lived for. If Shizuo was indeed a human, then he was fair game. People were foolish to get close to him, and Shizuo had to have known better.

How did animals handle emotional pain?

Apparently they disregarded the rules and laws they so carefully upheld. For a second Izaya felt the adrenaline sinking in the pit of his gut — Shizuo was perfectly capable of killing him right then and there — but the anticipated violence never came. Shizuo’s eyes lost all manner of light, but all he did was clamber to his feet and walk out. Metal was never an obstacle in the beast’s path, after all.

Izaya stared at the crude open circle now glaring in the bars, and the longer he listened to the clock’s indifferent ticking, the hollower he felt. The rush of ecstasy flushed out, and though there were no signs of the migraine either, his victory felt distant. Like it never happened in the first place.

He went back to his steel bed, taking solace in the fact that he could finally read in peace.

 

!

 

It struck him a month later when he snapped at a brainless client for being an idiot, that he was, in the most simplistic human terms, _upset_.

Strange tightness around his heart and an uncomfortable feeling somewhere where the knot of his stomach twisted… all the symptoms of stung pride, maybe, and Izaya was forced to introspect on the annoying feelings that had been chipping away at him ever since Shizuo left that rotten cell and never paid him a single visit after.

Not for the lack of trying from Izaya’s side, you see. He never imagined the hiccup at the cell to be that serious, until he put it into perspective and realized just exactly what happened.

It was a painfully gradual realization, but once he laid out all the cards on the table, he saw that Shizuo had won. The unpleasant thought danced around the edge of his consciousness for days before he finally pinpointed the exact reason he had lost.

Once again, Shizuo had _rejected_ him. He rejected him when they first met by immediately throwing a punch, but Izaya made sure to claw his way back in, easily fueling that natural hatred. He’d penetrated Shizuo’s heart to a point that they got tangled up in a lot more than plain fights, but it seemed to have been ruined beyond repair when he was foolish enough to talk during that rotten night of all kinds of revelations. That night, Shizuo must have finally realized the true hollowness of Izaya’s heart, and once again, Shizuo was the one with the last word. He left, and now he wielded the strongest weapon in human relationships: indifference.

Of course, he tried to antagonize Shizuo again. Izaya sought him out at his stupid construction jobs, used the most venomous of his taunts, but Shizuo simply didn’t see him anymore. He’d stare at him blankly, none of the familiar flames of ire or lust, rubbing contemplatively at his dirtied collar, and then he would go on with his day as if Izaya was never there.

The monster had officially graduated the academy, it seemed. And he had _Izaya_ to thank for that; if it wasn’t for years of unsolicited training in mental fortitude, Shizuo would still be stuck in a place in his life where he couldn’t even sustain a bartender’s job. He reaped the best of Izaya’s presence in his life, gotten stronger and had matured. Shizuo even got to fuck him for a whole half a year, whenever he damn pleased, too. Late night visits, aching bruises from the way Shizuo shoved him into the wall, the feeling of being thoroughly fucked by someone who held little regard for his being… Izaya had thought that it was a mutually beneficial arrangement, but now that Shizuo had left with the last word, the whole thing tasted terrible on his tongue.

During the most inopportune moments like at important meetings or during calls with influential clients, Izaya’s vision would flicker, mind filled with nothing but images of Shizuo’s body and the way he would briefly touch him before he went back to pretending that he was there to get off as quickly as possible. Countless times he would rewind their loaded history, and with a heavy heart he would always reach the same conclusion: against his best judgment, against his strongest denial, Shizuo had triumphed over him. These levels of anger that surged through him during those moments were the undeniable testament to that: Izaya wasn’t _supposed_ to feel angry. Anger as an emotion was supposed to be absent from his preferred arsenal. That it’d creep inside him against his will only unsettled him more, and he was forced to admit defeat.

Heiwajima Shizuo stood victorious over him. From start, he was superior physically. Now, he was stronger mentally, too — he broke free from Izaya’s presence in his life. To add insult to injury, he most likely got to enjoy seeing the hesitancy on Izaya’s face when Izaya watched him bend the bars and leave. That night, Shizuo didn’t even _storm out_. _Any_ sign of anger would have soothed Izaya’s heart in the following weeks, but the fact that Shizuo just calmly got up and left like that — that was the maddening part, the final nail to the coffin of his hope that there was still _some_ anger left.

There was nothing left. The last page was apparently flipped, they reached the end cover of the book, and Shizuo put it away. He didn’t _throw_ it away with some residual emotion. He slid it aside to dust in the past, as if the book didn’t affect him at all. As if Izaya was forgettable like that. As if none of it ever mattered.

Indifference really did hit the hardest.

The heart that he thought he had hollowed out a long time ago managed to feel emptier then. He was an addict in life, chasing things in people that would excite him the most, but as long as Shizuo was still in Ikebukuro, Izaya didn’t seem to know peace.

Rationalizations, it was all a mess of badly constructed post-rationalizations, by now he realized that much. His ideas of competition, that he wanted to defeat Heiwajima Shizuo, that he wanted to see him suffer. He didn’t know what the fuck he wanted anymore.

He tapped his finger against the smooth surface of the laptop folded on his knees, eyes unseeing over the wall of text he had just typed up. He’d built up a dozen distractions, and it was the kind of fleeting fun that irked him the most. At the end of the day, he was still left with an unsolved problem.

The cards simply didn’t lie. When only one party cared, that party was the losing one.

Now the question was: how on Earth did he manage to end up on this side of the battlefield?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh, it's been way too long since I updated, and all the comments and warm words people have posted were much appreciated... I re-read them often to regain some confidence about writing, and special thanks to the two people who had e-mailed me while I was "taking a break." Izdubar's emails were very heart-warming and insightful. I love reading about other people's headcanons... And of course, thanks to my beta for proofreading all my stuff. indridason is absolutely amazing and I love her fic so much. Please check her story out if you're looking for action-driven shizaya AUs!
> 
> I hope people who waited for an update on this story have been doing well in their lives. I've got another update coming up on the AU I'm writing, and I'll do my best to write the next chapter for this story as soon as possible. Good news is I'm done with school and and the last chapter to this story was written months ago... So really, those of you who are looking forward to updates are only waiting for one more chapter. (Next update will be a double chapter update.)


	7. Chapter 7

“So he’s been cleared of all charges?” Izaya asked to confirm once and for all. He had finally called the detective to explain away Shizuo’s charges if need be, but was surprised to find out there weren’t any left.

“ _Yes_ ,” buzzed Sakoda’s frayed voice over the failing connection. Signal was cutting out, and Izaya waltzed over to the other end of his apartment to see if it would make a difference. He had been pacing this room for a bit already, but at least now he had a semblance of a reason to be doing it. “ _The autopsy revealed an overdose on benzodiazepines, a few hours before the building collapsed. The woman was long dead before the rocks and debris hit her._ ”

“What about his break-out from the holding cell?”

“ _Well, truth be told…_ ” Sakoda paused, contemplating something. “ _A number of officers were dispatched after him, but no one really dared to pursue that man. By the time we, the detectives, caught wind of it, it was already morning and the time for his detention was over, so... yeah_ ,” he finished awkwardly and then cleared his throat, knowing that he sounded ridiculous trying to rationalize the fact that they chose to close their eyes on the whole thing.

“I see,” Izaya said. “Thank you.”

He was about to hang up when Sakoda’s voice played again. “ _He never came to retrieve his belongings, though,_ ” he said. “ _It’s been a month since then, and I think they dispose of them if nobody comes to collect them._ ”

“Ah,” Izaya hummed. “Was there anything valuable there?”

“ _Uh, I didn’t go through the things, of course, but someone was complaining about it in the pawn shop unit._ ”

Curiosity ate away at him for the next few days. There was probably nothing there, maybe a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, what else could Shizuo carry on himself? Whatever it was, it was something he didn’t miss, which ruled out any possibilities of it being something valuable to Shizuo.

Still, it didn’t hurt to check. Or did it? Why did he care anymore?

His thoughts reverberated inside his muffled mind when Shiki's monotone voice droned in the background.

“Orihara-san.”

He had the impression Shiki had been talking. With great effort, he refocused his attention on the man’s irked face, noting the lack of any humor in him. Shiki was quite obviously not amused by his spacing out. The Awakusu officer had come over maybe half an hour ago, and his request was rather simple, as far as Izaya’s blanking memory suggested.

“Would you like to reschedule this meeting?” Shiki asked formally, his curt tone implying that Izaya had better pull himself together.

“No, that’s quite alright, Shiki-san,” Izaya said. “I’ll get you your passports within a week. Write down the names, and make sure to use the right kanji!” he joked, swiveling in his chair. He needed to continue his usual performance. The last thing he wanted was his clients noticing that something was amiss.

“Perhaps your ears are due for a cleaning then,” Shiki said dryly. “I need them done by tomorrow night, at the latest.”

Ah, that must have been the bit he had missed. “Sure,” Izaya drawled, the gears of his mind clicking together to make up a plan that would make this feasible. Forging documents was easy if you knew the right people with the right tools, but the speed and the quality Shiki required made this one a rather difficult task. A favor from Shimada Hanzo*, and he should be fine. The man owed him one, after all. “Consider it done by tomorrow’s eve.”

He rang Hanzo after Shiki left, arranging a meeting for tomorrow. Hanzo was a young heir to a corrupt underground organization that controlled the Southern Towers of Tokyo. The young man had frequently been at odds with his brother, and Izaya assisted him on great many occasions to help smoothen out the turbulence within the Shimada family. There were a couple of things brewing on that front for Izaya himself, and he felt ready to jostle some things in motion. He needed whatever distraction he could get.

After the call was over, he dropped the mobile on the black leather of his couch, the shiny surface of the gadget glimmering under the silver moonlight that shed from the ceiling tall windows.

His life was something he often dreamed of as a teenager. He lived in an apartment that was furnished off the money he made from observing and serving people. Men of great power were just a phonecall away from his reach, each acutely aware that they had to lend their ear to the informant. All the acquisitions from the games he played, started, eavesdropped on, crashed… Izaya never thought he’d make it this far.

And yet his heart was a hollow cylinder that never filled up, all the excitement only present in the current time, always flushing out the moment he got bored and moved onto the next target. When he observed such tendencies in others, he called them adrenaline junkies, the people who chased the high of the dangers in the world. Living on the edge of a blade… Was he really any different? Sometimes he was so bored, he created his own games, clashed people together that would have never interacted if it wasn’t for him, threw bones to dogs that thought they wanted them. His favorite pastime — being a mirror, reflecting back whatever cursed desires people had and providing them. Ask a soul in Ikebukuro what they think of Orihara Izaya — each will come up with a different answer, because they saw different things in that mirror. They would be in unison on only one thing — that Orihara Izaya was dangerous.

Was any of it applicable to Heiwajima Shizuo? Hell no. Always the one and only exception. A man who shattered mirrors instead of staring into them.

“Sakoda-san?” Izaya chirped into the phone, his free hand playing with the other cell that he used to contact the Shimada family. “Yes, it’s Orihara Izaya again. You know, I’ve been doing some thinking… you remember the time I helped your colleague a couple months back? Oh, I’m so glad you remember. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone in the pawn shop unit, would you?”

 

!

 

The air was brisk and sombre in the morning, the skies overcast with violently purple clouds that threatened to pour buckets of rain on the city. He weaseled in and out of a stream of people that hurried to get to work, walking down Meiji Dori, his feet gravitating him towards the Toshima district against his better judgment.

A few blocks from Mejiro Police Station, he heard an obscure whistle and turned swiftly around the corner to find Arthur there. Arthur was a homeless-by-choice immigrant from the far east of Russia who oversaw the backstreet corners of the Toshima district. He was plopped down against one of the uneven brick walls, staring intently at something in between his hands.

When he heard Izaya’s footsteps, he straightened his back and looked up, hawkish blue eyes sizing him up. There weren’t that many homeless people around this area, and Arthur didn’t look the part, either. Sure, he was dressed rather modestly, but all of his clothes were clean, if a little baggy on his skinny frame. His blond hair was neatly tucked behind his ears, and he liked to wear a colorful earring in his right ear. By appearance alone, he was a small strange looking guy who seemed harmless, but looks were deceiving. He was a masterful con artist, so skilled at the art of silent pickpocketing, that even Izaya had to keep his eyes peeled whenever he dealt with him.

Coincidentally, Arthur was Izaya’s best man for the most up-to-date news about things that happened in Ikebukuro. The man’s hearing was a god given gift that he took full advantage of, and Izaya frequently relied on his channels to track Shizuo’s whereabouts. After all, Arthur was at the top of an entire network of bums, school kids and other unemployed souls who kept their ear to the ground, keenly aware of the latest news and developments of the busy streets of Ikebukuro.

Back during the times when Izaya’s stepping foot in Ikebukuro actually made a difference to Shizuo, he would use this information to avoid the beast when it was detrimental to his line of business to get caught up in a messy fight.

“Izaaaya!” Arthur drawled the name in a foreign accent and jumped on his feet. “How glad I am to see you!”

“Артур,” Izaya said, using the hard Russian syllables. Arthur took a tentative step forward, extending his hand to see if they could shake hands, but Izaya only canted his head with a smile, taking a step back. It was best to keep his distance away from someone who had such nimble fingers. “Do tell, what have you got there?”

“Rubik cube,” Arthur sighed, revealing the toy in his hands. “I can’t seem to beat it!”

“Ah,” Izaya lost some of his interest, recognizing the boring colors of a puzzle so simple. “You were waiting for me,” Izaya said matter-of-factly. There was no mistaking it; usually Izaya had to message Arthur before he came out to play, but this time the con artist awaited his appearance in Ikebukuro.

“Yep,” Arthur didn’t beat around the bush. “Heard something from a little bird,” he bared his uneven teeth in a crooked smile.

Izaya said nothing to that, mind splintering into a few threads, contemplating what Arthur could possibly mean by that. Nothing really came to mind, so he shelved the thoughts for now. “Shizu-chan?” he asked after a short pause, jumping on the topic that concerned him the most.

“As usual today, as usual. First the construction job near the Kaijyuu bakery. Then his work with Tom-san.”

“You saw him today?”

“Why yes,” Arthur nodded. “Usually it is not me who hears, but my minions. But today I saw Heiwajima myself; we crossed path. Nicked this from him.” He whipped something out of his pocket and waved a weathered brown wallet in the air, basking with pride as always. Indeed, pickpocketing someone as keen-sensed as Shizuo was quite a feat.

Izaya kept a straight face as he eyed the wallet. “Trade you,” he said playfully and gestured at the Rubik’s cube.

Arthur looked down at his Rubik’s cube, coy as he was, then shook his head. “Uneven trade. You solve Rubik cube _and_ take me with you to your meeting today.”

Now that was interesting. Asking Arthur how he knew about the meeting would yield no results, but Izaya suspected it was through the back channels of the Shimada house that the information leaked.

“Shimada’s impulsive. And with a warped sense of honor,” Izaya warned, though judging by the childlike grin splattered all over Arthur’s mug, he didn't give two flies about Izaya’s considerate words. “What could you possibly want from him, Артур? Am I not enough for you anymore?” he asked in jest. All in all, he didn’t see the issue of bringing him along, but business was business; he loved serving as a middle-man between people of interest.

“Do you want this or not?” Arthur asked solemnly, shaking the wallet with impatience. Of course, he had gone out to see Shizuo on purpose. He wanted in on this meeting and had to acquire something to bargain with.

But since when did Orihara Izaya want anything?

What a ridiculous notion.

He turned around on his heels, sneaking a poignant smile past Arthur’s observant eyes that Izaya only reserved for himself.

“Come to this address at noon,” he said over his shoulder, flicking a piece of paper in the air behind himself as he left.

 

!

 

Hanzo was meditating atop one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo when Izaya pushed open the heavy door that led to the spacious roof. The door screeched and clanged open, the rusted hinges in a dire need of some oiling. The roof was deserted, with no soul in sight aside from Hanzo himself, and the view of Tokyo sprawled across all directions, no matter where Izaya looked. The city seemed quieter than usual, as if hushed by the promise of a thunderstorm under the ominous blanket of coal-black clouds.

The wind was in a powerful mood up there, gaining traction and speed because of the lack of obstacles at an altitude so high. It blew open Izaya’s furcoat, forcing it to violently flap around his frame. If they delayed their conversation for too long, he’d certainly grow cold, for his body had so little insulation, the wind instantly stole all the heat from him.

“My, you’re here early, Shimada-san,” Izaya said in a singsong voice, feeling a little miffed on the inside. He liked to arrive to meetings before anyone else did. Hanzo’s ponytail was blowing in the wind, the signature yellow ribbons that he used as a hair tie unfurling in the air.

“Felt like a good time to get away from things,” Hanzo said with no hint of humor in his voice, his eyes still closed. He lowered his head a little more, making no motion to stop his meditation on account of Izaya being there. “Call me Hanzo, Izaya,” he added quietly.

He was a no-bullshit kind of guy, this young heir to one of the most powerful families in Japan. It was flattering that he wished to be on a first name basis.

“With all due respect,” Izaya said courteously. Call it tradition, but Izaya had to humor the intricate dynamics of hierarchies that were central to Japanese relationships. As an example, he had no right to interfere with the young man’s meditation, partly because Hanzo’s family was far more influential than Izaya’s invisible spiderwebs, partly because Izaya did arrive thirty minutes too early. To bide time, he jumped up onto one of the platforms, staring off to the north of Tokyo. Ikebukuro’s streets were right there, and he scanned them, distantly wondering what Shizu-chan could be up to at that moment.

(Would his mind always hitch onto the thought of Shizuo, even when Shizuo himself had moved on?)

“I believe you brought another with you today,” Hanzo finally spoke, ten minutes later.

“Yes indeed,” Izaya reported dutifully. Hanzo’s men were probably downstairs, having checked the lobby, the nearby blocks, perhaps even the nearby streets. “A man who cannot solve a Rubik’s cube,” he giggled a little to himself as he said that, realizing that that description of Arthur was far from being the most apt.

“Can he not Google a solution?” Hanzo asked, wide-eyed. Now that he wasn’t meditating, his clear eyes were fully focused on Izaya. It always unnerved him a little, the intensity with which Hanzo approached everything in his life. He was a studious worker, training until blood was drawn from the tips of his fingers, a marksman who preferred a modernized bow to the use of guns.

“He dislikes technology,” Izaya said with a smile. “Says it makes things too easy. Laments the times when two people could talk about something without one of them rushing to Wikipedia every single thought they shared.”

“Strange man,” Hanzo hummed. “And yet I understand his frustrations. Young people are too invested in their toys these days.”

“Oh, I’m afraid I would disagree here. You see, I actually love technology. Anything invented by humans, really, and at the pinnacle of their inventions today are all these beautiful little toys,” Izaya whipped out a cell phone, waving it in the air.

Hanzo gave a perfunctory nod, then slapped his palms against his knees. “Well then. We’re here on business, I believe. I brought you the stack of passports,” he turned sideways, fumbling for something behind himself, then hitched a purple string, with a black bag at the end of it. “This should settle our previous affairs. If you wish me to talk to your friend, I will need another favor, my dear informant. I have trouble again.”

“Let me guess. Family issues?”

“Yes,” Hanzo said, growing grim. “Genji has been missing again. My advisers are highly displeased. I wish I could just let my brother be… but he stains the honor of our family by straying away from us.”

“You always talk about honor like it’s a cloth that is to be kept clean… but does anyone really pay attention anymore?” Izaya asked, propping his foot against the edge of the roof. He leaned onto it as he watched the distant commotion down below, cars and people rushing around like ants around an anthill. The fear of heights threatened to overwhelm him as he reined it in within himself, reminding himself that his balance was pitch perfect. “I’m not too sure anyone considers Genji’s sexual escapades when they think of the reputation of the Shimada family.”

An arrow whistled past his ear as he jumped sideways to dodge it. For all it was worth, Izaya kind of predicted this response, even if he hoped for a different one. He landed firmly on his feet, shaking dirt off his hands since he used them to somersault out of the arrow’s curved trajectory. It bounced off the concrete wall of the roof, cascading down and onto the ground.

“No one is allowed to talk about my brother in such a way,” Hanzo said sternly, putting his bow aside. He remained in the same seated position that he meditated in, and despite his apparent anger at Izaya’s words, his face was calm, though still intense as always. “We need not discuss what honor is, Izaya. You and I will always disagree on that. Help me find him, and I will help your henchman.”

“My hench—Oh,” Izaya realized who he was talking about. “He’s not my henchman. I actually have no idea why he wants to see you. But yes, I will help you.”

“The wind is blowing,” Hanzo said grimly as he got up. The yellow ribbons flapped in the air like a raised flag at the mercy of a cold wind. “And I do not like the way it’s pointing. I’m expected to control Genji when I don’t want to.”

Izaya said nothing, as he caught the bag Hanzo threw at him. A month ago he would be salivating at the severity of Hanzo’s mood. He had been waiting for the falling out between the brothers, eager to jump in at the right opportunity to see how far they would go in their stubborn attitudes towards each other. This was his chance to shift Hanzo’s reluctance towards a more aggressive mood.

After a short pause, Izaya chirped, though he wished he could sigh instead. “I’ll see you soon, Hanzo-san. There isn’t a soul in Tokyo that I cannot reach.” His heart stammered as he sang those words, the sinking realization that he was dilly-dallying sending heat through his veins.

He’d get to Genji first — the younger brother was much easier to manipulate, or so Izaya told himself as he struggled not to think about the fact that he simply decided _against_ playing with Hanzo's character.

He took the stairs down, nodding at Arthur who was patiently waiting behind the door. At Izaya’s sight, Arthur jumped up and moved to give him a high five, as if Izaya would ever let the man near himself. He kept the other at a distance, smirking at Arthur’s visible disappointment, and caught the wallet thrown at him. His fingers clutched onto it, as Izaya fought the strong hankering within himself to dig into the new little window into Shizuo’s life.

He pocketed it instead, too annoyed at himself for always thinking about Shizu-chan.

He really, _really_ shouldn’t care.

Next stop, Shiki Haruya, and then he shall commence the search on Hanzo’s prodigal brother, the young man that knew no bounds or satisfaction when it came to partying. He was so easy to turn wayward, that Izaya was sure he’d take the bait.

 

!

 

He sat in the back corner of the bar, in front of him on the table a glass of juice and the black cell-phone that Shizuo used to send messages to before his impromptu night visits. The beverage was one of those sparkly sodas that Izaya despised, but it could pass as alcohol by looks, so he made do with it. An establishment like this, he didn’t want to stand out, because he wanted to blend in with the dark in order to observe people.

He could feel the weight of the leather wallet in the inner breast pocket of his coat. The same kind of weight seemed to be perpetually present in the back of his mind. The more he fought the desire to rip open the stupid wallet (what could possibly be there, aside from a few cash notes? Izaya wasn’t sure Shizuo even owned a credit card), the stronger grew the fire of his curiosity. Everything about Shizu-chan was an itch. No matter how much he scratched at it, he would never feel satisfied. That’s why he felt the desperate need to burn away the wound, or to sever the limb, anything required to get rid of the entire infected area.

If only he knew how. As a man who liked to pretend he had all the answers, Izaya felt pretty empty-handed.

Across the bar was a young handsome man with two women by each side. He had just finished demonstrating a backflip from one of the bar stools onto the floor, striking awe in the two young ladies with his agility. Izaya suppressed the urge to do a loud sarcastic clap, because he wanted to stay in the shadows for a little longer.

It didn’t take him very long to find Shimada Genji — all he had to do was call up the bartenders at the three secret locations he knew Genji liked to to frequent.

When the clock struck ten o’clock, he’d decided he waited long enough. A covert tap on the man’s shoulder, a quiet whisper of ‘ _your brother sent me_ ’, and a discreet waltz back to the booth he came from. Genji’s eyes immediately grew wary at the mention of his elder brother, but he was wise enough to follow Izaya.

“What’s the problem this time?” he demanded rather aggressively as he sat down across the table. “I haven’t messed with anything of importance.”

His defensive posture captured all the indignation of a wronged child. He was twenty-one, the ideal age in Izaya’s mind, but his attitude was that of a coddled teenager. A recent graduate of Todai and with exceptional skills in _iaido_ and _ninjutsu_ , he would be the epitome of a prodigy if not for his carefree lifestyle that involved excessive drinking and womanizing.

“Your brother wants you to come back.”

“Why?” Genji asked angrily. The way he huffed anger with each word reminded Izaya of Shizuo. “I’m sure he’s got everything under control. He doesn’t need me.”

His bitter tone suggested the years of life he had to endure under Hanzo’s controlling regime. Their father was protective of Genji, but he had passed away recently, which led to Hanzo growing more strict when it came to Genji’s preferred activities. Izaya’s eyes lingered on the fire of conviction that glistened in Genji’s eyes; the young man certainly felt like the world was unfair towards him.

“Don’t you ever get tired of it?” Izaya wondered out loud.

“Of my brother?” Genji asked, caught off-guard. “No. I love my brother. He’s just—”

“I mean, of partying all the time. Sex, drugs, alcohol… Doesn’t it get old?”

“You here to lecture me as well?” Genji frowned. “Just tell me what Hanzo wants and be on your way. You’re nothing but a messenger, so don’t overstep your bounds.”

It was amusing, that Genji considered himself to be far superior to the “likes” of Izaya. Izaya stifled a giggle as he said very solemnly, “Hanzo orders you to return.”

From the inside of his coat Izaya plucked the arrow Hanzo shot at him earlier, sliding it across the table to rest in front of Genji’s widened eyes. It glowed neon blue in the darkened ambiance of the bar, the splintered mechanical tip burning the brightest. It was a special type of arrow that was manufactured illegally; the tip would have exploded in a dozen of lasers if Hanzo enabled the function at the time of shooting it.

“What’s this?” Genji further furrowed his brows as he grabbed the arrow. “Is this Hanzo’s way of warning me?” he was quick to jump to the wrong conclusion. In Izaya’s world, it was the right kind of conclusion.

To stir more chaos… Izaya sighed as he threw his head back against the leather seat, forgetting to mask body language as obvious as that.

He was so, fucking, _out of it_.

This moment right here was where he played the devil. He whispered the wrong sentiments into someone’s ear, sowed seeds of doubt in those who wavered... Except lately he just wasn’t feeling it. The young impulsive man in front of him was so prime to be misled into the territory of his worst fears and suspicions, and yet Izaya felt reluctant to be the one leading the blind.

Conflict had _always_ boiled within the Shimada family. It was inevitable that the two brothers would eventually confront each other, and all Izaya had to do was fuel the dormant flames, give them the necessary spark required to clash the two together.

His heart felt like a balloon about to pop, from all the pressure around it. He was losing his touch, losing his bearing on the reality he so carefully constructed around himself. Was it all because of a single person had “rejected” him? He was supposed to _adore_ it when people hated him. Why was it so goddamn complicated this time?

What game was he so desperate to play? Izaya felt so damn empty-handed, because by the looks of it it wasn’t any game he usually played.

“Orihara?” Genji was wearing a befuddled look when Izaya refocused his attention. “You still there, mate?”

“Yeah,” Izaya echoed, straightening in his seat. “Hanzo shot the arrow at me when I spoke little of you,” he said plainly, his voice betraying not a single flicker of emotion. The words rang hollow on his tongue as he delivered the truth. “He told me that no one was allowed to talk about his brother that way. Isn’t he such a great brother?” he forced himself to feign admiration, laughing. “I have two little sisters of my own, and I wouldn’t even blink if anyone called them names.”

“Really?” Genji looked down at the arrow again, a different kind of emotion lighting his eyes. The defiant armor that he was so used to wearing cracked then, as he looked touched by the truth behind that arrow. He was quick to believe Izaya, though then again, he would have been just as quick to believe him if Izaya lied that the arrow was a declaration of war. That was his original intention, after all.

“You should return home,” was all Izaya said as he got up to leave. “Your brother hates fighting with you.”

 

!

 

So there he was, at the end of that fruitless day where he accomplished basically nothing, sitting on the cold floor of his bedroom.

Shizuo’s wallet and cell-phone in front of him, a dimming laptop by his left side. The cellphone was the item he obtained from Detective Sakoda after he paid a visit to the police station. When his thumb brushed the screen of the phone, it became clear to Izaya why the people at the unit complained about it. It had thirty-eight missed calls and twelve unread messages.

For a monster who had trouble fitting in within the society, he sure was popular. And dearly missed, it seemed. What a joke.

The phone didn’t have a security lock, but Izaya couldn’t bring himself to flip through the unread messages. Hell, he didn’t even take a second look at it even since the screen lit up, announcing it to Izaya just how much Shizuo was missed.

Why did Shizuo not retrieve his phone? Perhaps he had gotten a new one. Maybe he wasn’t as poor as his unimaginative wardrobe and taste in food suggested.

With an inaudible sigh, Izaya laid down on the cold floor, his eyes returning to stare at the same crack that he never did get around to fixing.

His behavior that day was crucially out of character. For months he had been preparing the groundwork for the culmination of the conflict between the Shimada brothers, and on a whim he had dismantled all that work in an eyeblink. Genji’s softened eyes periodically came up in his vision, as did Hanzo’s appreciative voice, the words from an earlier phone-call replaying in his head. To be thanked for a job well done, what a travesty. People were supposed to be at a loss between thanking him for delivering what they wanted or cussing him out for deceiving them like a genie who brought what people thought they wanted, but not what they needed.

For what it was worth, those two brothers _did_ want to fight. Those urges were present in both of their souls, their disagreement and temper eager to flare up. And yet Izaya chose to clear away all that tension, serving as a mediator instead of an excited referee.

He wanted to focus on the upsides of such a decision, he really did. Hanzo now felt forever indebted to him, a powerful ally to have. Their trade in illegal firearms, as well as access to research facilities of the highest caliber, was highly lucrative. He wished he could feel excited about the fruitful prospects of such an alliance, but his heart kept coming up short with emotion, like a broken TV box that sizzled out without producing any pictures.

That lack of enthusiasm for the things that used to fill him with life betrayed the truth that Izaya wanted to distract himself from. The dam was about to break any moment, now that the deafening silence within his apartment amplified the pressure. Memories of his fixation on Shizuo’s cigarettes flooded his mind, his own silly attempts to make him stop smoking. Pathetic, that’s what Izaya was.

 _A man of mirrors my ass_ , he thought with bitterness. Someone ought to bring a mirror to him, for he was blinded about everything when it came to Shizuo. Heiwajima Shizuo, the glaring sun of Orihara Izaya’s life, always burned him when he wanted to fly away.

Curse it all. He didn’t want to think about it anymore.

He should’ve led Hanzo downward. As the rightful heir to the empire, he would surely kill his own brother if Genji kept refusing to back down from his way of life. Izaya could see it in Hanzo’s judgmental eyes; the man was ready to strike down anything that opposed him. A picture of peace was unimaginably boring. What use was a painting that reflected no conflict, no sign of a struggle? Hanzo was supposed to be scarred by the experience and continue on to mature into a person who would overcome having done such a thing. Or he’d crumble apart, shattering under the weight of regret that would overwhelm him after the deed was done.

The various scenarios played out in his head as Izaya lay on the floor, motionless. Either of those scenarios was more to his liking, and he felt as if his brain was twisted sick. Why did he fail to deceive the two brothers into a war? He strayed from his own path because…

…he dozed off, not finishing his thought, his tired mind turning itself off against his will. Some inane visions filled his consciousness, a myriad of blinking doors that taunted him with an exit, just to shut right in his face. He’d seen this dream before; the doors would never let him escape whatever plane of existence he was inhabiting. He’d run around, anxious, desperate to defeat the undefined challenge laid out in front of him.

The sudden barrage of loud knocks against his front door woke him up, as he jerked to sit up-right, feeling as if a gong had struck in his mind. Stifling his panic, he glanced at the clock ticking the neon green of _3:09 AM_. He found himself to be freezing, the A/C at his place set to a temperature a tad too high for his preference. His body shivered and his mind remained paralyzed under the sweeping realization that was nobody would assault his front door like that at this hour.

Nobody aside from Shizuo.

On unfeeling legs, he tiptoed to the door, only pausing for a second before flicking it open.

There he was, in the full glory of a completely drenched animal, the man who had plagued Izaya’s existence since the day they met. Shizuo was soaked to every single inch of his clothing, small rivers of water dripping from his hair and the tips of his fingers. The night sky had finally exploded in a thunderstorm a few hours ago, unleashing a strong current onto the streets of Tokyo, and it didn’t look like Shizuo made any effort to escape it.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Izaya forced a smile on his face as he took a dancing step to the side. “I don’t have all night.”

He often used to say something to that extent whenever Shizuo paid him a visit at night. It’d always lead to the same rushed sex sessions, and Shizuo would storm out right after, and Izaya wanted to believe that this particular late-night call was no different. Maybe all it took for Shizuo to quit his game of indifference was him being starved of regular sex. He was an animal, after all.

Shizuo stumbled past him, drips of water flicking off his hair as he shook his head, like a dog that trudged out of muddy waters. Izaya watched his every movement, his eyes eager to catch any kind of signal. Would Shizuo attack? Would he jump at him with the intention to hurt, or to fuck, or both?

For the first time in weeks, Izaya felt like he was alive. Fear and excitement flowed through his veins, and he knew he probably exuded the air of a drug addict who finally got to his high.

But Shizuo didn’t move. He stood frozen, barely past the threshold, looking at Izaya with a flare of regret, as if he wished he had never come. Izaya was quick to usher him in, nudging Shizuo forward so he could shut the door. An annoying thought pinched him in the back of his mind as he did so, because he grew painfully aware of his fear that Shizuo would leave again.

Shizuo didn’t resist the nudge, stumbling a few steps forward, looking like he wanted to curl into a small ball and disappear. He was probably deeply uncomfortable in his damp clothes. Shaking his head at the sight, Izaya gestured towards the shower. “Go ahead, take a shower before we start.”

“I’m not here for that,” Shizuo mumbled after his stupefied face lit up with understanding.

They locked gazes again, the tension between them growing by every second. “Strange,” Izaya hummed to fill the silence. He tried his best to act like Shizuo’s arrival was nothing out of ordinary. “What are you here for, then? I’m not exactly interested in anything else.”

Shizuo said nothing, as his gaze traveled around the apartment, as if he was taking in the surroundings. “I… uh… beat up a guy,” he said vaguely as he tried to hide his hands instinctively.

“A guy…?”

That was rather non-descriptive. Izaya noted the chafed skin on Shizuo’s knuckles before the other hid them behind his back. “Well, what unfortunate soul dared to tick you off this time?”

“He stole my wallet, okay?” Shizuo said defensively. “It took me the entire goddamn day to track him down.”

Oh, poor Arthur. He should’ve known better than to mess with Shizu-chan and his sense of smell.

The silence between them thickened, only disturbed by Izaya’s soft footsteps as he walked back to his office desk. He jumped to sit on the desk’s surface and turned back to look at his unexpected guest. Shizuo was pale as a sheet, now standing awkwardly by the couch, his hands still hidden behind his back. There was a certain tint of despair in his expression, as if he was preparing himself for something final.

“Cat got your tongue?”

Shizuo ran a hand through his hair, looking more distraught by the second. “The guy sent me your way. Said you had my wallet.”

An obvious excuse to come see Izaya. This was getting interesting. "And you believed him?” Izaya smirked.

“Really don’t think he had a reason to lie," Shizuo answered honestly. "Definitely not after the fifth punch.”

“I see,” Izaya said, crinkling his nose at the mention of such unnecessary violence, dangling his legs a little. He briefly calculated all the escape routes he could take from that spot. One through the front door, another through the fire escape, and the last one from the balcony. “So… a wallet with a few cash notes is what makes you break the silent treatment?”

“Silent—what?” Shizuo scoffed, losing some of his tension on the account of getting angry. “I wasn’t playing a game.”

“Nevermind,” Izaya shelved the topic, refusing to discuss the fact that Shizuo had ignored him for weeks. “You look miserable. You know they invented umbrellas for a reason.”

Shizuo graced him with a roll of his eyes as he plopped down on the couch. His shaky hands fumbled to light a cigarette as he anxiously looked around the place.

“Never really took a good look at your place before,” he admitted as he exhaled smoke a little too forcefully and arched his neck to scan the row of bookshelves on the second floor. Smoking seemed to relieve some of the pressure from him; he looked less mortified. Izaya supposed the hardest part of coming here tonight was knocking on the door.

“Hard to appreciate architecture when one’s busy ripping clothes off another or stumbling to get their pants on in panic.”

Shizuo said nothing to that, as he flexed the fist that was free of a cigarette. He flinched a little, the open skin on his knuckles probably stinging as he did that.

“You’re here for the wallet then,” Izaya said, stealing a furtive glance at the door that led to his bedroom. The wallet was still there, abandoned on the floor along with the mobile, and if Izaya truly wanted the monster gone, he could probably go fetch it and then throw him out. Shizuo wasn’t in a fighting mood, or he would have attacked by now. What his visit truly meant remained a mystery that Izaya was dying to resolve.

“Maybe I am.”

“You’re so laconic, Shizu-chan,” Izaya drawled out his annoyance. “A man of few words. You’d almost look smart, if it weren’t for your actions.”

Another taunt went by ignored, as Shizuo continued huffing smoke. A few minutes later he put the butt out against the glass of the coffee table and went for another one. The lighter kept giving out as he kept patiently flicking it, until the spark finally latched onto the end of the fresh cigarette. “And you sure waste words like no tomorrow,” he finally muttered, turning to look directly into Izaya’s eyes, like an animal eyed its prey. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinkin’ recently.”

“Jesus,” Izaya exclaimed comically. “I hope you didn’t hurt yourself.”

“You’re not really gonna get a rise out of me, so don’t waste your breath,” Shizuo cut him off as he loosened the bow-tie with his free hand, getting comfortable on the couch. “I’ve done a lot of thinkin’, come to some decisions. Talked to that girl you mentioned that night.”

 _Saki_? God knew what the girl would say these days; he hadn’t been in touch with her ever since she had moved onto Masaomi, her newer obsession. But that thought wasn’t at the forefront of Izaya’s carefully masked shock. If Shizuo had talked to the girl, that meant that he did some semblance of investigative work, since Izaya had never mentioned her name that night.

“Any revelations? How is she doing, by the way? It's a real shame that her recovery took so long.”

“She’s fine. She told me a lot about you.”

“You realize she—”

“She what? Doesn’t really know who you are? Just like _I_ don’t know who you really are?”

Izaya stiffened in his posture, a little annoyed at the interruption. He disliked being cut off mid-sentence, and on top of it, he found it hysterically funny that people tried to categorize him. What could Saki possibly know about him, if Izaya only showed her what _she_ wanted to see? She was in a dismal place in her life when he first met her, and she needed someone to guide her. Someone she could adore and worship, using it as a newfound meaning of her life. Once she stopped looking to him for that purpose, Izaya set her free. She met a boy she genuinely liked, and Izaya had to hurt her in order for her to stop seeing him as some almighty god whose will must be obeyed.

It was really getting ridiculous, having to sit there and watch the man Izaya hated the most be so goddamn relaxed. The smoke in the air traveled around his apartment, making its way to where Izaya was and filling his nostrils with a stench that was all too familiar, old memories flashing in his mind like a Pavlovian reaction. God, how he hated those fucking cigarettes. He scrambled for any last threads of patience, before something within him tightened to its max and finally snapped.

“I have no interest in arguing with you, Shizu-chan,” Izaya tilted his head to the side, containing his anger. Not a single drop of it was allowed to go over the brim. “You have the gall to ignore me for weeks, then come here uninvited thinking you can dictate your terms. If it was sex you wanted, _sure_ , I could play along. Why not. But it doesn’t appear to be the case, and a monster like you has nothing else to offer me. I would advise you to leave, before either of us gets hurt. You always do go on about how much you hate violence and all that jazz, so _please_ , be a doll and see yourself out.” He smiled wide, a sharp show of teeth rather than friendly emotion. A blade slid down his wrist from the inside of the sleeve, landing firmly in his palm. He waved it slowly in the air, drawing a vague shape of a heart with its edge.

Shizuo’s glare regained the earlier tint of despair. “You let me in,” he said quietly. There was a slight stutter in the syllables, as if he was struggling to speak. “Could at least give me the chance to speak my piece.”

“Oh, are you going to plead?”

“No,” came an immediate growl. “What’s the fucking deal with you? No one _has_ to get hurt.” Shizuo sat up straighter, the muscles of his body tensing. The cigarette had long burned away, since Shizuo had stopped smoking, forgetting about it for some reason.

A thought struck Izaya as he watched the dim light give out. He jumped off the desk, making his way over to the couch. His heart fluttered uncomfortably, warning him of the dangers such proximity birthed. He strangled all the stray thoughts that wanted to invade his mind, as he sat down by Shizuo’s side and leaned into him. Shizuo flinched, but didn’t recoil, his frowned eyes glued to the blade still resting in Izaya’s hand.

“How long does a cigarette last?” Izaya asked, slowly lowering his blade to clink against the glass table. He smiled into Shizuo’s scowling face, as his hand traveled down, cupping Shizuo’s knee and running up the thigh before slithering inside the pocket of his pants. It found the crushed pack, and he wiggled it out, plucking out a single cigarette. “I’ve averaged it to around four to five minutes when it’s you smoking post-coitus. Let’s see how long it takes me. And by the end of this cigarette, Shizu-chan, I want you out of my sight,” he sang the words quietly, like a lullaby with a teasing promise of violence. “Until then, you are free to to say whatever you wish.”

He flicked the lighter and took his first tug, masterfully recreating the moves of a seasoned smoker. His mouth, throat and lungs burned at the foreign sensation, but he betrayed none of that discomfort as he smiled into Shizuo’s panicked face.

“This is unfair,” Shizuo growled as he shifted some mere centimeters away from Izaya’s proximity.

“Suit yourself,” Izaya shrugged, demonstrating another exaggerated tug and relishing the sense of control he had regained over the other. He refused to let Shizuo skid away, knowing how much physical proximity must be unnerving him. He slid closer, keeping his right hand tight around Shizuo’s knee.

“ _Fine_ ,” Shizuo breathed out, looking at the cigarette in panic. He stared at the burning end, biting down on his lip. “Like I said _earlier_ , I’ve been doing some thinkin’. _You_ can play whatever games you want, but I realized something.”

“Hmm?” Izaya hummed as he puffed a cloud of smoke into Shizuo’s face. “And what would that be?”

“You can’t get rid of me,” Shizuo said quietly, pulling his face to the side to dodge the smoke. “I can’t get rid of you either,” he added right after.

Unfortunately, Izaya knew exactly what Shizuo meant by that. “Then why the silence?” he couldn’t help but ask, dropping some of the pretense. He was on his fourth tug of the cigarette, his cringed lungs almost making him regret the entire thing.

Shizuo looked away, staring off somewhere. He couldn’t afford to remain silent though, for the cigarette was one third done.

“Shit is hard,” he muttered.

“Great answer,” Izaya heaved a theatrical sigh. “I just don’t get it, Shizu-chan. You know I like to play with people. Anything you can think of, you know I've probably done worse. Why the dramatic exit that night?”

“’Cause it all came flying at me at the same time…” Shizuo mumbled, glancing at the cigarette again. “Like, our lives, our differences… my hopes, your fears.” His voice grew smaller by each word, until it was barely above a whisper.

“My _fears_?” Izaya didn’t know whether to be appalled or amused.

“Yeah, you looked panicked as fuck that night,” Shizuo said with a resentful scoff. He straightened in his seat, glancing down at Izaya’s hand on his knee. “I mean, at first everything was going kinda sorta well, as well as it could between us. Then it was like you suddenly hit the brakes and started searching for all the ways to reverse all that… progress, I guess?” Shizuo finally looked up at him, as if Izaya would help him find a better word. “I dunno. I just kind of realized then that something had irreversibly changed. It hit me like a brick, and I think we both ran away, in our own ways.”

Izaya could feel the hairs on the back of his neck tickling his skin as Shizuo spoke those words. A complete novice at smoking, his head was feeling dizzy from the euphoria caused by what he recognized as the release of dopamine. Shizuo’s presence alone was enough to fill him with adrenaline, and that combined with the smoker’s high made him overly sensitive to all stimuli. The more Shizuo spoke, the more his knee under Izaya’s hand had pointed towards him, sliding Izaya’s hand closer to the area he didn’t want to dwell on.

He fought the impulse to withdraw his teasing hand, unable to back down from his own game. Falling victim to one of the many things he hated in Shizuo, he couldn't help but focus on smoking the cigarette, feeling the need to escape the hole he had entrapped himself in. The cigarette was halfway done, and he needed only a few more tugs before the whole ordeal was over. His breathing had grown erratic, shedding doubt in him that he could come out of this duel as a victor, because by the look of clarity in Shizuo’s eyes, the monster was getting more and more comfortable.

“I know you wouldn’t tell me what you think, so I won’t even bother asking,” Shizuo said carefully, annoying Izaya with his perception. “But what was I supposed to do after? I couldn’t really go back and pretend that nothing had changed. That night, you and I _talked_. I know you fancy yourself all high and mighty, thinking that I can’t possibly _get_ anything you say. But some of that stuff you said was genuine, and I think I saw bits of you that were the real thing. Saki, that girl you mistreated? She said a lot of good things about you, you know that? I was shit scared to even bring you up, but she was _happy_ to talk about you. Like, her face all lit up and shit, and she kept going on and on about how you’re so smart and amazing.”

“She said all that?” Izaya asked in disbelief. “Ha ha, the girl’s truly beyond help then.”

“I don’t know, I can kind of understand where she’s coming from. You really don’t give her enough credit. I think she knew it all along, the kind of person you are.”

“Are you trying to draw a parallel here?” Izaya forced a laugh, his throat hitching. Just a few more tugs and Shizuo would be gone. The buzzing in his mind would finally stop and he would be free again. The end couldn’t come sooner.

“I guess I am,” Shizuo declared. “You’ve always underestimated me.”

“You…” Izaya drew a breath, his lungs giving in. His mind was too light-headed for this conversation. “You are _impossible_ to underestimate,” he spat an insult he knew to be false, articulating every syllable. Shizuo shook his head, glancing at the cigarette about to burn out.

“You smoked it too fast, Izaya,” he said with no humor. “For someone who doesn’t smoke, you should have taken it easier.”

“And your time is out,” Izaya announced, drawing the final tug. He couldn’t stifle the cough that came with it and rushed to crush the butt against the glass of the coffee table, a flurry of orange sparks scattering and dying right away. He withdrew his hand from Shizuo’s thigh, scooted away to gain some distance and looked at him with triumph. “You’re hilarious, you know that?” he laughed, putting his hands together in a small appreciative clap. “Coming here with all these revelations of yours, ha. If there is one thing that’s good about you, Shizu-chan, it’s how entertaining you are.” He got up, ignoring how wobbly his legs felt, his balance compromised by a stronger wave of light-headedness. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Shizu-chan.”

He tottered towards the bedroom, dead sure that that was the end of it. All his ideas of emerging as a victor had long vanished, for he had lost at his own game, finding himself too dazed to deal with the honest stream-of-consciousness that erupted from Shizuo.

 _Burn it all in the Seventh Circle of Hell_. Izaya really didn't give a fuck anymore. Fortune would always favor Shizuo, and Izaya would always end up on the losing side. Nothing new in this old rotten world.

“I ain’t about to leave,” Shizuo’s voice came from behind. “You think I’d come all the way here just to walk out?”

Izaya turned around, speechless. What was Shizuo suggesting?

“You can’t just stay here,” Izaya finally breathed. “Do you want a fight that badly?”

“Please,” Shizuo had the audacity to smirk, draping an arm over the back of the couch. Izaya’s eyes slightly widened in shock in the face of such brazen comfort. “You’re not throwing me out, we both know that. Maybe a short tussle with a few cuts and bruises, but it’ll morph into that hate-sex that we were so eager to practice.”

“Are you suggesting that we skip the tussle?” Izaya asked, leaning against the door frame that led into his bedroom. He pulled it off as a suggestive move, but he needed the support to stop his head from spinning.

“No, I suggest we stop running,” Shizuo insisted. “It’s always an endless battle with us, but in the end I just want to stay here, on the battlefield, I mean.”

Monsters that evolved enough to speak in metaphors... Truly a rare sight. Unfortunately, the underlying message rang loud and clear, reminding Izaya of the root of all of his recent issues. The residual taste of the cigarettes on his tongue was a fading reminder of what it felt like to kiss Shizuo, and the implication that Shizuo _wanted_ to stay was inconceivably hard to believe in.

“Why?” Izaya finally asked, failing to suppress the note of bitterness. “You hate me. You hated me since the very first day you met me. You should want me gone from your life. You should be praying for it.”

None of it made any sense.

“I don’t _just_ hate you,” Shizuo said after a short pause. “There’s other stuff too.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t make me say it, Izaya,” Shizuo grumbled. “You can fucking guess. You're smart like that.”

 _Lust_ , Izaya tiredly supposed. He had felt better by then, the unwanted feeling of high from the cigarette receding from his bloodstream. His thoughts cleared, as his gaze remained fixed on the shameless guest that invaded his couch. The lows Izaya had fallen to, when Heiwajima Shizuo was doing most of the talking between the two of them.

“Fine,” Izaya said in what felt like a surrender. “If you wish to stay here so badly, I don’t really mind. You ought to bring something to the table though,” he said, opening the door to his bedroom. He nodded his head in an open invitation, and Shizuo readily jumped to his feet.

Had anything really changed?

Shizuo was no more gentle than before, which was not at all, when he threw Izaya on the bed. The bed creaked under both of their weights, Shizuo’s knees trapping Izaya’s hips between them. The answer to the unspoken question came straight away in the form of a hungry kiss — something that had never happened before in their foreplay. His stupid heart thudded a little too loudly at the warmth Shizuo’s body radiated when Shizuo pinned his arms above his head, and Izaya was lost in the ocean of emotions that washed over him.

If Shizuo was a slave to the cigarettes, then Izaya was a slave to these sensations.

Shizuo’s head turned to the side, as if he noticed something on the floor. “Hey, that’s my wallet and phone.”

“An astute observation,” Izaya said impatiently, his cock pressed aching against Shizuo’s hard body. “For your information, I didn’t snoop in either. For all the wrong reasons, but still.”

Shizuo shrugged. “I don’t really care if you do. I’ve nothing to hide.”

He dove in for another kiss right after, erasing the last shred of coherency from Izaya’s entangled thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *[Shimada Hanzo](http://overwatch.gamepedia.com/Hanzo) , [Shimada Genji](http://overwatch.gamepedia.com/Genji) are characters from the universe of Overwatch. (In the game's lore, Hanzo does leave Genji on the verge of death, believing that he had killed him.) If you enjoy Japanese-styled tales, I suggest you watch the cinematic called ["Dragons"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ09xdxzIJQ) on Youtube!
> 
> Unfortunately, I expanded the story a little and it turns out there's going to be an extra chapter. There's just some more stuff I want to cover between the two of them, so a little more talk, some more struggles from Izaya and some actual decisions from him rather than him going along with the current. Then a lot more fluff, and finally an epilogue of sorts. The very last chapter's still 99% written and finished, the next one is like 80% done, just needs a bit of tailoring and fleshing out.


	8. Chapter 8

In the morning, Izaya jerked upright and swept his arm across the sheets to see if Shizuo was still there.

Of course, he was.

Heat was radiating off Izaya’s body that wasn’t his, because he was pressed against a foreign body the entire night. Shrugging off some inane dream that was still interlacing through the threads of his coherency, Izaya placed a cautious hand on Shizuo’s shoulder. He was sleeping on his side, facing away from Izaya. Wild blond strands scattered across the pillow, and above the line of the blanket that bunched up around Shizuo’s hips Izaya could observe the curve of his lean back and the wide span of his shoulders.

It was unsettling. Heiwajima Shizuo was in his bed, and he was there with _meaning_. The content of their late night conversation played through Izaya’s mind, and he frowned so intently, his forehead felt strange — the skin on his face rarely tightened to that extent. With considerable effort, Izaya suppressed the thoughts on how he could hurt the other man. Instead, he leaned over him and wired his dry lips into a smile.

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya tried to sing and almost stammered from how weak his voice sounded. His throat was dry from overnight dehydration, his eyelids still heavy. Maybe it was best if he got himself together before Shizuo woke up. Before Izaya could act on that thought, however, there was a grunt, and Shizuo turned around and draped an arm around him, forcing him down with the weight of his arm alone. He didn’t seem awake yet, but he responded to the disturbance nonetheless.

By reflex alone, Izaya lashed his arm out, aiming for the wind-pipe. Shizuo instantly released him, toppling over to the side in a fit of coughs. Brown eyes shot open as he covered his neck, sitting up and trying to orient himself against the bundle of blankets that tangled around his waist.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he rasped out once he was mostly done coughing. He looked back at Izaya who was now sitting on the edge of the bed, ready to fight inside his own apartment. When Shizuo’s sleepy eyes cleared with understanding, he let out a small chuckle in-between the receding coughs, more of a rumble in the back of his compromised throat. “Stop freaking out, Izaya,” he said, shaking his head a little. “It’s just me.”

‘ _Just me_ ’ my ass, Izaya thought without any humor. Shizuo’s eyes were so goddamn understanding, and then they widened a little, and the man started laughing for real. He propped his hand onto the blanket to steady himself as he laughed and coughed at the same time, his other hand still cupping his neck.

“Care to enlighten me as to what you find so funny?” Izaya asked, feigning general disinterest. The laugh was irritating the hell out of him, but he couldn’t let it show that he was affected by it.

Shizuo recovered from the hit at a remarkable speed — within a minute he was completely fine. Izaya knew it would take him a lot longer to regain the power of normal speech if he took a blow to the windpipe like that.

“You just look so _sleepy_ ,” Shizuo said as he grinned a smile Izaya had never seen on him. Perhaps because he had never seen Shizuo so sleepy before, period. “Your hair’s all messed up, too.”

Izaya kept blinking, eyelids still feeling like they were sewn together and he was pulling the stitches apart. “Well,” he said, running a hand through his hair in an attempt to smooth it. “I’m only human. I’d love to look flawless in the morning, but…” he parted his hands, denoting that he couldn’t help it.

“Yeah,” Shizuo said, sizing him up. “You’re human,” he repeated as if the words struck him as strange. They sat on the bed, staring at each other. Silence engulfed them. Izaya twirled a piece of sheet in between his fingers, mulling over the unusual circumstances of waking up next to Shizuo and then just being _next_ to him, with no violence or other graphic content involved. No fighting, no sex, just… He closed his eyes for a second, cursing his weird inability to deal with something so normal.

Something that other people didn’t even stop to consider, probably.

That was the reason his guard was let-down when Shizuo charged him — within a split second he found himself pinned down, Shizuo on top of him like an immovable bundle of lead.

“So heavy,” Izaya could only say as he looked up, rendered helpless. “This is why I’m _freaking out_ ,” he said mockingly, echoing Shizuo’s choice of words. “You can kill me with just a little pressure around my neck and I can’t do anything about it.” His eyes flitted to the side where the nightstand was, a pair of knife blades inside.

“Relax,” Shizuo adjusted his position over him. His hips snugged comfortably against Izaya’s boxers, and he thrust them up a little as if to test out the feeling. Through the soft fabric of their underwear, Izaya could feel the shape of Shizuo’s morning wood; it pressed against his own flaccid length.

“You punched my freaking windpipe! First thing in the morning, too. This calls for some _sweet_ revenge.” Shizuo mumbled as he ran a hand underneath Izaya’s shirt, calloused palm grazing the smoothness of his stomach.

Shizuo didn’t look like he would hurt him, and the idea of morning sex kind of pleased Izaya, so he shrugged a little, relaxing under the heavy body that gave him no leeway to move. Normally it wouldn’t fly with him to be so helpless, but he could write it off as animal foreplay in his mind. He looked up, an angelic smile over his lips.

“You weirdo,” Shizuo huffed, noticing the change in mood, then slowly lowered his head to bury his nose in Izaya’s neck. “I’m not kissing you in the mornings by the way.” The words came out muffled, warm air tickling Izaya’s skin.

“Your breath is far worse than mine, I guarantee you,” Izaya said matter-of-factly, trying his best to keep his body still — it was embarrassing how little Shizuo needed to do to reduce his body into a trembling mess of goose-bumps. His wrists were still pinned by his side, and the pressure hurt, warning him about the dangers of the bloodstream being cut off, but he found himself enjoying the sting of pain — it wouldn’t be Shizuo if his strength wasn’t brimming over the top. He stopped struggling against the hold, slowly realizing to his mild discomfort that he enjoyed being pinned down like that.

Shizuo was being weird, though. He wasn’t just nuzzling — he was _smelling_. His soft nose traveled everywhere, tracing out the contour of Izaya’s neck, brushing his ear, burying itself in the fine hair behind the ear. It was obvious he was relishing the smell, from the way he began breathing heavier the more he took in Izaya’s scent and from the growing hardness of his erection against Izaya’s own. With a wide smile against Shizuo’s naked shoulder, Izaya marked it as his win. He had always suspected that his smell drove Shizuo insane, and now he was witnessing the undeniable proof of it.

“You like my smell,” he purred, trembling a little when Shizuo’s nose dragged along the lines of his collarbone.

“It’s terrible,” Shizuo mumbled a lie into his skin. He was almost panting by now, arousal ringing heavy in his low-pitch voice and shadowing his darkened eyes.

 _It’s better this way_ , Izaya reasoned as he lay motionless while Shizuo explored his body. Sure, he renounced control and let Shizuo do whatever he wanted, but this way he didn’t need to return the physical affection. He wouldn’t know what to do with his hands when Shizuo acted so outrageously tender, aside from pulling on the blond hair which he had always done anyway.

Contrary to his expectations, they didn’t have sex that morning. Shizuo spent half an hour acquainting himself with all the nooks and crannies of Izaya’s body, breathing in the scent and occasionally giving small tentative licks, while Izaya struggled not to moan from something so idiotically primitive as someone else dragging their nose around his body. Eventually, Shizuo’s arousal reached a tipping point, it seemed, and he must have spilled inside his briefs, pressing against Izaya’s thighs like a dog in heat. His nose was burrowed in Izaya’s neck when his body shuddered and he gripped tighter onto Izaya’s wrists for imaginary support.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he exhaled as the last wave of pleasure released him. For seconds that seemed to last like an eternity he was breathing out in bliss, before he realized what had happened and jerked back in panic.

“Seriously?” Izaya slowly rose to sit up. “You _really_  came from just smelling me?”

Shizuo’s cheeks flushed darker with both embarrassment and ire. He looked down, mortified, as there was no hope of saving his dignity when his gray briefs were visibly wet, a dark stain slowly spreading across the material. Without a single word he tumbled off the bed and charged towards the shower with all the grace of a mountain troll.

It was Izaya’s turn to laugh, the sharp sound of his laughter slicing through the cozy slumber-like morning.

_My victory._

 

!

 

“You really _are_ a protozoan,” Izaya said, shocked to every inch of his being.

Shizuo sat by his kitchen counter, a fresh bowl of milk in front of him. By his right hand was a box of cereal, and with attitude, the beast announced that he always poured milk first and only then added cereal.

Perched on a kitchen stool, his white shirt unbuttoned and loose, Shizuo looked majestically domestic. Izaya kept stealing small glances while he brewed tea and tapped his slender finger against the granite counter to a beat that stuck in his head since the morning. It was a piece he knew by heart. The well rehearsed routine of preparing something for breakfast distracted him from having to think too seriously about things, but the [uncertain music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VStRc-tgik) that curtained his mood was a grim reminder of all the doubts that plagued him.

Shizuo’s mood was the opposite of his, a brilliant blue sky against an overcast one. “Breakfast cereal is about milk to me,” Shizuo enthusiastically explained as he heartily poured out the content of the box into the pool of milk. “I decide how much milk I want, so I pour it first. It makes perfect sense.”

“You’re more insane than me,” Izaya shook his head, unable to agree with that logic. He would never pour the milk first.

He glanced down the vertical strip of skin that was visible between Shizuo’s parted shirt. Just above the beltline he could see the small dark hairs that hinted at what was down below. _I never knew how shallow I was,_ Izaya thought with an inward scoff. Shizuo was too handsome for Izaya’s own good. He wished that they _did_ have sex that morning, though Shizuo’s premature ejaculation was too golden to miss out on.

“Tch, staring at me so shamelessly,” Shizuo gave a little chuckle, rubbing his bleary eyes. He still looked a little drowsy — they never did get much sleep last night.

“Well, someone got me hot and bothered this morning without taking care of me,” Izaya teased as he slid a cup of tea in front of him. Shizuo furrowed his brows, the petulance of his expression reflecting his strong conviction that the world was unfair. He looked like a giant, over-sized child.

Namie usually showed up later in the day. Speaking of Namie, it was probably best if Shizuo left before she arrived. Izaya looked at the clock to check the time. He then had to wonder if he was searching for a reason to throw Shizuo out. Was he treating this as an anomaly that he had to live through? Somehow, Izaya doubted that Shizuo’s first morning at his place would be the last, now that they had “agreed” to change some things. It was hard to call it agreement, considering how little say Izaya seemed to have last night, what with the beast barging in and declaring that he was going to stay from now on.

Shizuo looked down at the cup offered to him, the hot steam trailing upwards from the liquid’s surface. “I don’t drink tea,” he said, putting a hand around the cup. Hesitant, he raised it to his lips before slamming it back down.

“ _Hey_ ,” Izaya softly frowned, leaning over the counter to investigate the cup for damage. “I know you’re an oaf, but that’s my favorite set—”

“Your wrists,” Shizuo said very quietly as he grabbed Izaya by the elbow and arched it up to get a good look at the pale skin.

“Hmm?” Izaya looked up. At least the cup and the plate seemed relatively unharmed. He looked at his wrist that Shizuo was staring at and noticed the black marks of Shizuo’s fingertips. Shizuo had done much worse to him before without batting an eyelash. “What about them?” he asked, taken aback by Shizuo’s intensity.

“I hurt you earlier,” Shizuo said, releasing Izaya’s elbow. “Fuck, I didn’t even realize.”

“You thought you were being all gentle, didn’t you?” Izaya laughed, glad that his arm wasn’t being held hostage anymore. “It’s fine, Shizu-chan. I’m not made of china.”

“China?” Shizuo asked, perplexed. “I didn’t think you had Chinese in you.”

Izaya rolled his eyes. “Like, I’m not made of porcelain. I can take it,” he elaborated on the common expression. Shizuo was weirdly oblivious about some things. About a _lot_ of things.

“Oh.” Shizuo’s eyes lit up with understanding, but then he frowned. “I dunno about that. Porcelain seems like a good word for you. It’s brittle, sharp. Refined,” Shizuo mumbled adjectives as he stared down at the tea, probably wondering if he _had_ to drink it.

Under Izaya’s hawkish stare, Shizuo looked resigned to take a small experimental sip, licking his lips after, expression soft and thoughtful. Izaya glanced at the porcelain teacup, noting that it didn’t crack when Shizuo slammed it down in his shock that he had hurt him. He then looked at his own wrists that were now sporting bruises as bracelets. Or were they cuffs… He was marked, out of his comfort zone and anxious… _Who’s taming whom exactly_ , Izaya thought, feeling a little blue.

_Shizu-chan’s victory?_

He looked into the innocence reflected in Shizuo’s eyes. He was so goddamn casual about everything, shoving cereal flakes in his mouth like it was his last breakfast. A frown spilled over his features when he intercepted Izaya’s stare, and with a quick wave of his hand he gestured him over, his other hand shoving the bowl aside.

“What?” Izaya asked, walking around the counter to stand by Shizuo’s stool.

_Like a trained dog…_

His thoughts wavered at the sight in front of him. Shizuo smirked quiet mischief, face aglow with something that so terribly resembled happiness, and with palms wedged under Izaya’s armpits, Shizuo lifted him up to plop him down on the counter. It felt unpleasant, the bones of Shizuo’s fingers digging into the delicate angle of Izaya’s underarms.

“Manhandling me,” Izaya sighed, but he never resisted it. He sat in front of Shizuo, cold countertop chilling his bottom. Shizuo caught the hem of his t-shirt between his fingertips and slid it upwards. Before Izaya could voice protest, Shizuo leaned in to kiss his stomach, and Izaya almost gasped from the contact — Shizuo’s lips were still moist with cold drops of milk.

“ _Ah,_ ” Izaya fell forward a little, fruitlessly fighting the tremble that took over his body. His arms naturally wrapped around Shizuo’s shoulders as he attempted to restore the balance with the edge of his words. “Careful, Shizu-chan. You might just cream yourself again. Are you that eager to take a second shower?”

“Shuddup,” Shizuo snarled into the skin of Izaya’s stomach, tickling it. He gave it a couple more licks before he looked up. His eyes weren’t murderous like they usually were when they fought, but they reflected the same level of intensity and concentration. “You’re thinking, yeah?”

“Yes, that’s what sentient beings do, Shizu-chan,” said Izaya as he leaned in and tried to catch Shizuo’s lips with his own.

(He owned them now, right?)

Shizuo moved his head, escaping his reach, and Izaya frowned.

“Quit overthinking it,” Shizuo insisted. “Just be here. With me. I dunno how this works, but—”

Izaya raised a gentle finger to his lips, silencing him. “I’m here,” he murmured, then tugged down on Shizuo’s head, forcing his face to burrow in his stomach again. “I’m not going anywhere.”

… _yet_.

 

!

 

“I like walking like this,” Izaya insisted as he tiptoed atop a tall fence. He was moving fast and light, bushes and rocks and litter blinking underneath his feet. By his side and on the ground was walking a very annoyed Shizuo, whose chronic dissatisfaction with Izaya was reflected in the way he mauled down on the butt of the cigarette in his mouth.

“You look stupid prancing around like that,” Shizuo said in a low grumble. “Children do that, and you’re not a kid anymore.”

“So harsh,” Izaya said and somersaulted backwards to show off the perfection of his balance. Chipped paint cracked and crumbled under the weight of his feet, the old wood of the fence complaining from the strain. “You know that might be the only thing we share in common, right?” he smiled at Shizuo afterwards, basking in the way Shizuo looked even more irritated.

For a moment Shizuo frowned deeper at the question as if by old habit, but then his forehead cleared, and he looked up at Izaya with mild curiosity. The dying sun glinted off his blond hair and lit up his clear eyes, turning their color into a strange shade of caramel mixed with gold.

“Our childlike attitudes,” Izaya hurried to continue before Shizuo’s handsome face derailed his train of thought. “We’re a pair of oversized children, stuck in a mindset that’s far from normal adults.”

“I think I’ve been an okay adult recently,” Shizuo offered, almost proud. His movement halted, a half-formed step dropping on the ground, and for a few moments he lingered still, watching Izaya balance himself along the thin unstable surface. “Damn,” he paused, as if he was still deciding on something. The pensive look he was wearing then Izaya had rarely seen on him; Shizuo reserved it for Tom and Vorona. “You know you’re amazing,” Shizuo then said matter-of-factly, and inadvertently shattered the entirety of Izaya’s equilibrium.

His breathing stopped long before his feet actually slipped.

The world spiraled before his eyes, the span of the reddened sky, the apartment complexes, the branches of the nearby trees. A slow motion vertigo, with his mind barely registering the tangled images before his eyes because it was still sizzling from the words Shizuo uttered so plainly.

He landed hard on his ass as he attempted to smooth his fall with both of his hands, rough asphalt and rocks cutting his palms. His heart was squeezed somewhere uncomfortable, strange feeling tightening his veins. _This is no longer the effect of gravity_ , he reasoned calmly within the rational part of his brain. _This is emotion._

There were emotions; fear, to be specific, amplified by the physical pain, by the world’s muffled drums, by the notes of an anxious violin that kept playing in his head and by the fact that Shizuo was right there.

If Izaya looked up from the ground, what would he see? Concern? Worry? Disappointment? Would Shizuo run by his side, offering him help?

_Give me a break._

The thought alone almost made him laugh out loud in hysteria. Though in his mind he followed and analyzed what felt like thousands of threads, he knew only mere seconds passed in real time. The lag in his perceiving senses was unprecedented. He had choked from an adrenaline rush before, but never to this extent.

Nothing to lose, right? An empty heart, and it only keeps emptying. He looked up sharply, ready to face the unpleasant truth.

Shizuo hadn’t moved an inch from where he was, watching him wide-eyed.

“The fuck?” he blinked as he plucked another cigarette from the pack. “Just as I compliment you, flea, you go and do that.”

An inaudible sigh, and the invisible chains around his heart loosened. Relief surged through him, the adrenaline rush slowly receding.

Then he laughed out loud, the echo of his laughter cascading down the alley, catching strangers off-guard and making them turn their heads in wonder. Somehow, the fact that Shizuo wasn’t wearing a look of worry or concern heightened his already soaring spirits, clearing away the last of his doubts. He sat up on the ground, slumping against the fence he just tumbled down from, oblivious to the lingering pain of the impact. Nothing in his life ever felt more natural than the befuddled look Shizuo was wearing as he watched Izaya revel in his apparent bliss.

“You never act like a normal person,” Shizuo huffed. His hands searched his pockets for something unattainable, and it became clear to Izaya then that Shizuo was just out of his element as Izaya himself was.

“Neither do you,” Izaya said pointedly when Shizuo plopped down next to him, a palpable distance away, but close enough that it fluttered his already sinking heart. “Case in point… what on Earth are you doing now?”

“Dunno,” Shizuo said. “I assumed you were trying to look cool after you collapsed like a bag of bricks, what’s with your graceful posture against the fence. I thought I might as well join you. Make it look more natural, you know?”

“Oh, is that your idea of help?” Izaya smiled. There was nothing natural about the way the two of them were sitting against a random fence, passersby sending wary looks their way.

His back stung, because he must have slid down the fence, the wood slicing a line alongside his spine. The pain was actually sizable, between the torn skin on his back and his splintered hands, but physical matters like that were far from his main concern during those moments. He watched the profile of Shizuo’s face as the man looked up at the sky, as if to absorb the last of the sunlight. His eyes drowned in the orange glow, thick eyelashes almost joining together as Shizuo squinted.

“Don’t stare directly at the sun,” Izaya said, his throat feeling dry. “It’ll give you a migraine.”

“Never had a headache in my life,” Shizuo said, blinking. He turned to look at him, eyes disoriented. “There are strange black circles dancing in my eyes now.”

Izaya snorted. “What a poetic way to put it.”

“You know that’s what cats do,” Shizuo said all of a sudden, turning back to the sun. His left arm rested on his lifted knee, weathered shirt sleeve bunched around his elbow, while his right arm was on the ground between them, palm up.

“What?” Izaya asked. He didn’t follow Shizuo’s train of thought at all. When did he ever? They had always been on entirely different wavelengths.

“You know, that thing where cats fall but they try to pretend that they meant to do that all along. They look around, kind of embarrassed, doing their damnest to look natural, as they walk away all posh and cool. It’s cute.”

Izaya said nothing, his mind splitting into a million threads again. So many possible retorts or responses, and yet he felt so fazed, he ended up saying nothing.

He could feel his heartbeat thud in the heat of his cheekbones, when Shizuo’s hand, somehow rougher than his even after all the injuries he had just sustained, searched the ground and finally found Izaya’s. Izaya didn’t resist, nor did he react, letting Shizuo hold his hand hostage. His mind played out ridiculous tunes, as it latched onto the fact that Shizuo, for all intents and purposes, looked criminally shy in that moment. Shizuo stared firmly into the horizon, the quiet intensity of his determination matching the dying sunlight.

He had no business looking shy like that, really. They must have had sex maybe a hundred times by now, and on any other day Izaya would have mocked him relentlessly for this gesture, but he knew all too well where the difference stemmed from. All the sex before was just a side effect of the insurmountable tension between them, just like their endless fighting, only wrapped in different foil and packaging.

Now that they had moved past that, things were different.

 _Bad faith_ , Izaya thought back on the philosophical concept as he glanced down at his small hand captured inside Shizuo’s. Not to answer was a form of bad faith; it was indecisiveness, pretense, cowardice. A two-faced heart. Reject it or accept it, but do not delay it. This was almost textbook Sartre, and the hilarity of finding himself in the position of a woman who neither turned down advances, nor rejected them, awoke him like a splash of ice water in the face. Yes, he was a coward, but there were limits. He would not stoop to that level. He couldn’t help but envision Sartre’s judgmental face as he hurried to squeeze back, hard as he could, thankful for the pain as his injured skin tightened.

Shizuo turned to him in surprise.

“Shut up,” Izaya said simply as he bit down a smile. “Your small brain has no idea what I have to go through.”

“ _You_ shut up. You’re so damn inadequate, you can’t do the simplest things.”

“You know, that is no way to court me,” Izaya said, feigning hurt, but his mouth curled into a reluctant smile.

“Eh… it’s worked out so far,” Shizuo grumbled an undeniable truth with a smirk. His free hand fumbled for the cigarettes again, and Izaya reached out to cover it. Shizuo looked at him again, incredulous.

“Stop smoking so much,” Izaya urged with a condescending note. “People like to use cigarettes as a distraction. It’s something to busy the hands with, and you’ve burned through four cigarettes in the last half hour. If you’re that uncomfortable…”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” Shizuo cut him short. “Fine. I’ll stop.” He fished the pack out of his pocket and threw it away. A flash of regret ran through his face as he shifted uncomfortably, staring at the faraway pack, and Izaya weakened his hold on Shizuo’s hand, wondering if Shizuo had lied. “I didn’t mean to litter,” Shizuo coughed to clarify when he caught Izaya’s look. “That’s _all_ I was thinking.”

 _Oh_.

Well.

That was a whole lot easier than he imagined.


End file.
